Category Archives: Crazy Germans

Crazy Family, Crazy Germans, Mom in Law, Our cute son, Travels

The Wonderful City Called Dresden

July 24, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 39 Comments

Last weekend we visited Dresden the capital city of the Free State of Saxony. It was the first time for Nathan, my wife and of course MIL to visit that part of Germany. I on the other hand had been there multiple times however I never really did see the city. The thing is I lived in East Germany, okay to be more precise in ~~Karl-Marx-Stadt~~ Chemnitz, for a couple of years as I went there to the Sports High School. During those years I visited a lot of cities but only for competitions and thus I usually never saw more than the swimming pool and the next McDonalds. So Dresden it was and I was really excited as I could visit an old friend from high school again.

Our journey started on an early Friday morning in my great home town. Before Dresden we decided to have a short stop in Chemnitz to grab some food and look at the Sportforum, the place where I lived, studied and trained for two years. In Chemnitz we had our belated lunch as we arrived after roughly 6 hours car driving fun at around 3pm there. We only stayed shortly as we wanted to arrive at the hotel in Dresden as soon as possible and to have some daylight left to see few things around the area we stayed. From Chemnitz we had another enjoyable car ride to Dresden which lasted roughly one hour. Let’s just say that such long car rides are no fun at all. While driving through the city I was already amazed how differently it looked compared to all other cities I have visited thus far in Germany. Our hotel was located in the city district Neustadt and it was the perfect location for our needs!

dresden18 — Part of the Procession of Princes which is made of Porcelain

For one my friend’s apartment was just 15 min away by walk. Then the city center itself with all the great sights was just 10 min away by tram and last but not least the district Neustadt was just amazing. To be precise Neustadt is divided into Inner Neustadt and Outer Neustadt but let’s not focus on such details. What we noticed first there was the huge amount of historical buildings just everywhere and then the huge amount of young people all around. Apparently Neustadt is known for its many students and it is a thriving hip district full of restaurants, bars, clubs and a lot of “alternative” shops. We just loved it there as it was so lively putting Helsinki and its hip district of Kallio to shame. During our first evening there we went to a nice Vietnamese restaurant and had some great dinner.

On the second day we went after breakfast to the historical city center and tried to see as many sights as possible. MIL was in awe as she had never seen anything like that before (actually I haven’t either!). It was just too bad that during our time there the famous Frauenkirche was closed. This Frauenkirche is a church which has been destroyed as so many other buildings there during WWII and reconstruction was only finished in 2005. Most interesting about the city center is that every buildings looks old there but in fact nearly all of the living houses are modern buildings with a classical facade because there was not so much left after the war so they reconstructed only the most famous sights and settled for modern buildings for the rest. They did a real good job in getting the old feeling back with these buildings as such is missing in nearly all German cities which suffered so high damage (Dresden was to 60% destroyed during the war and approx. 250.000 to 500.000 inhabitants and refugees died during the terrible bombings). Afer a small lunch with my friends we went to the Bastei. It is a rock formation just about 45 min away by car from Dresden Neustadt. The rock formation is pretty famous here but also gained some world-wide attention as it was one of the desktop screens for Windows 7. Nathan loved the bridges spanning around the rock formation so much that he didn’t even want to leave anymore! Let’s just say he was rather upset when we “forced” him to come with us to the car…

Later that day we went to my friends and had some lovely BBQ in their backyard/ inner yard. As both are vegetarian we had only a small amount of meat and the rest was all about grilled vegetables and cheese. Myself I am perfectly fine to have these days a meat free BBQ but they bought for us some meat so we couldn’t say no. When it was getting darker we walked from their home towards a bridge spanning the river Elbe to have a great view towards the historical city center. I had all my equipment ready for some great pictures but next to the bridge was some kind of music festival which resulted in annoying light and smoke disturbing the pictures.

dresden1 — Failed attempt at taking a nigh shot

In the end I can say it was a wonderful trip and I recommend for everyone visiting Germany to have at least one or two days in Dresden. It is a wonderful city with a lot of history and I think it is really a must see destination. Both MIL and my wife enjoyed the time there a lot however they were not too fond of the six-hour car ride. They were especially bored on the way back when I took over music control and listened the entire way to an audiobook as I just could not face any more K-Pop.

Some people were playing classical music there

Dresden Zwinger

Zwinger from the inside

There is another castle in the background!

Together with my friend and his girlfriend at the Bastei (hope he won’t hack my computer after showing him to the world in this picture!!!!)

Have you ever visited Dresden or heard about this city?

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Daily life of an Interracial Couple in Germany

July 10, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 54 Comments

We live now for over 1 1/2 years in Germany and are getting the hang on living here. I should know much about it as I lived here nearly my whole life except those 7 odd years in Finland but it ain’t so. You see both my wife and I adapted to the life in Finland during those years rather well and things are just a bit different here in Germany.

There is for instance the good old Mittagsruhe – Midday Peace which is a quiet time from 1pm till 3pm. You shall make no noise at all during that time. You have some work at home which needs to be done? Tough luck as you will have a horde of furious elderly neighbours massing in front of your door in case they even hear a tiny sound. This might sounds amusing but it is not, not at all. Sure it is a more generational thing these days but we have the luck to have a building full of elderly people here and they can hear pretty well out of nowhere as soon as it is Midday Peace. Also another thing I didn’t know about in Finland is that many restaurants have a Ruhetag – Day of Rest some when within the week, sometimes even two of those days. I wonder how often my wife and I already drove somewhere to eat just to find out that they have their Day of Rest…

Anyhow this is actually not what I wanted to write about but it came to my mind as I just had yesterday again some complaint from a random neighbour due to the midday peace. The topic for today is in fact something like a continuation from my post from January 2015 “Living as an interracial couple in Germany”. Back then I had many things on my mind with people behaving odd with us or also the thing about language. Most of those troubles have subsided over time such as the annoyance with official documents and governmental things as they are done (for now). Also we had no stupid neighbour going through our trash anymore which is rather nice. But there is still something which happens few times a month.

When I take a walk with Nathan around the city people always say how cute he is, especially elderly women are really fond of him. However when we are out together as a family people are looking at us and then whisper something to each other. Often when I am close enough I hear stuff like “She must be here for the Visa”, or “Another Thai around here” or “I wonder if it is even his child”. Now I don’t get upset about it or try to argue with them as it is anyways useless. I never heard such stupid things in Finland, not in the big city there nor in the countryside. Here in Germany I also only heard it in my hometown not in the bigger cities such as Hamburg, Kiel or Cologne. It really seems that people in Germany appear to be more narrow-minded the smaller the city gets. But I must also say this is another generational thing same as the before mentioned “Midday Peace”. I have never heard anything like that from people around my generation, always from one to two generation older than us.

It appears also that the people around here have a very certain stereotype when it comes to WMAF, White Male Asian Female couples. Why? Because more often than not you see older German guys with their younger Asian (in this case nearly always Thai) girlfriends or wives. In fact in our building there is a nice man living together with his Thai girlfriend but she lived here already years before she got together with him. This is also why all peopl assume that my wife is from Thailand. Just few days a guy whom I gave few cents for a bus ticket asked me if my wife is from Thailand. Here again it is nothing I get upset about, nor does my wife care about it any longer but the consistency about those things are something which sticks to my mind. Do I think that life is harder for us due to our interracial relationship? No, not at all but it brings up a lot of more comments from other people around. Sure many of them sound racist (some actually are) but most of these comments are happening because they don’t know any better.

Now that this is of my mind (thank you blog for being my therapy) I can go back and focus on more important things in my life, such as preserving the kitchen from total destruction due to MIL. Oh and by the way, next weeks blog post will be a bit delayed. We will be over the weekend in the beautiful city of Dresden for some sightseeing, eating and visiting a few of my friends.

Do random people start talking about you when you take a walk outside?

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Another Day at a Renaissance Fair

June 19, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 34 Comments

Last year I wrote about the little medieval market we visited during the 888 years celebrations of my hometown. Shortly afterwards I gave you some impressions from a much bigger renaissance fair near our place. Back then I was thinking how great it would be to dress up as well like so many other people were doing it at the big medieval market. Lets just say my wife and I were gathering some stuff since last year and put it into use last month.

mpsh12 — People are slowly arriving at the festival

Back in May just a week after we arrived from China it was time again for the renaissance fair near my hometown. The whole event was going on for three days but we chose to go only on one day (the middle day) as it is pretty tough going around with a little kid such as Nathan in addition to be rather pricey when thinking about the tickets and food there. We immediately regretted that we didn’t go during the first day because the weather changed for the worse. We had all the time sunshine till the day we wanted to go to the fair. The day started without any sunshine, instead it was all grey in grey but on the bright side it was dry. Guess I was too happy too early about having no rain as the first downpour out of many started right after we arrived at the fair.

mpsh11 — Some creatures getting shelter from the first downpour

Even though the weather wasn’t the best the festival area quickly filled up. All over the place they had tents to give shelter from the rain and huge bonfires to get some warmth in case the Met wasn’t enough. Due to the bad weather Nathan was forced to wear a jacket and thus couldn’t present his Chinese Emperor costume to the world. My wife was wearing a Chinese dress she bought in China plus all the accessories and I had created my own personalized clothing since last year. Okay I didn’t made anything myself as I bought most things and my mother actually tailored me few parts as well. I fashioned my costume, as a Lord of the Rings nerd, after the Rangers of Ithilien. Sure it is not authentic but it looks alright in my opinion. As this renaissance fair’s motto is also “Not Authentic but Phantastic” it fits just well. You could see people with real clothes from back in the day but also many Elves, Orcs, Trolls, Pirates and last but not least also a guy wearing a Unicorn dress…

mpsh7 — A little parade around the festival area

I wanted to take so many pictures there this year again of the whole area plus of ourselves but the weather wasn’t on our side. I didn’t want to damage my cameras in the rain thus I ended up with just too few pictures which I took in the rare rainless minutes. Due to the bad weather we also stayed only for a few hours. Right when we wanted to watch the Bruchenball tournament (some kind of rugby game with a 30kg heavy ball…check out this link for some pictures) I spotted huge dark clouds approaching and we hurried back to the car. Just when we arrived some real big storm started to bring hell on earth as huge hailstones threaten to destroy my car. Anyways we arrived safely back home and were happy that I spotted those clouds as it would have been no fun to be in the renaissance fair with that storm.

mpsh1 — Beginning of the Bruchenball Tournament with the last bit of sunshine for that day

For this year we have planned to go to another renaissance fair in September managed by the same organizer. That time it will be in Hamburg and we hope to go there for two days and stay overnight at my cousin’s house who lives just 5 min away by car. The organizer is doing nearly every weekend such festival in different cities all over Germany but we think that going to two of them is more than enough due to our limited free time and of course due to the high costs involved.