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Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Germans, Mom in Law, Our cute son, Travels

City Tour Extreme: Day One, Nanjing

May 8, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 49 Comments

Our holidays in China are over but I still feel exhausted from the crazy city tour we had. As mentioned before I have a lot to write about this trip, in fact too much so I will have few posts about the different days. The first day of the tour was in Nanjing where we met the rest of the tour group. We had actually arrived in Nanjing the night before but we pretty much didn’t see anything except the airport and our luxury hotel.

I know that Nanjing has so many things to visit and I was worried that we would only rush to the different locations as we had only one day there. Oh silly me, I shouldn’t have worried about rushing to all the different spots as we visited only two! Yes two locations we visited before going back to the hotel for the night. No we did not visit the old city fortifications, nor the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, nor Yuejiang Lou, nor any former Nationalist time governmental buildings and and and. I think you can see that we did not visit many places and that I was kind of disappointed. This was not only in Nanjing the case but any other place we visited during those five days.

In the beginning of the tour we basically went to our tour meeting spot by the lake and then drove by bus to the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum 中山陵. The construction of the tomb started in 1926 and was finished in 1929. In case you don’t know about Dr. Sun, he was the first President, founding father of the Republic of China and posthumously named “Father of the Nation”. The mausoleum is located at the Purple Mountain and the area is just huge. As it is located at the mountain slope there are more than just a few steps leading up. The vault is located more than 700m away from the entrance to the mausoleum and the main stairway has 392 steps leading up. During our visit it wasn’t too crowded so we didn’t have to line up anywhere. Once reaching the top of the view is just incredible. In the vault you can not actually see the tomb as that room has been locked up due to vandalism few years back.

Nanjing8 — Top of the stairs of the Mausoleum

After the trip to the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum we had another wonderful trip with the bus to our next location: Nanjing Fuzimiao 南京夫子廟. Back in the years (many years back!) the Nanking Imperial University was placed there as well as a Temple of Confucius. Over the years the place has been destroyed multiple times and most of the current buildings are from the 19th century or even younger. In 1985 it has been restored and you can find now many cultural attraction there but also various places for shopping and last but not least there is a huge variety of different food. Now I was myself not too happy there as it dawned on me that the whole city tour would be like this leaving too many wonderful places out.

Nanjing1 — Going around Nanjing Fuzimiao

I wish we could have visited all the other places as well but I know that is never really the purpose of those Chinese tour groups. Thing is we faced many problems with this tour group. For one it was not cheap at all but most annoying the whole schedule was changed. Okay not for all of us as only we had the wrong schedule and the entire rest of the group had the correct schedule. Our original schedule was more relaxing as times for driving between the different cities was better planned and we would have seen more in the cities than just one or two places. Needless to say we were not pleased at all with the whole situation and we wanted to quit the trip more than just once. To make matters worse is that it started to rain after the first day for the rest of the trip and temperatures plummeted down from 30 degrees Celsius to 15-18 degrees Celsius.

This sculpture in front of the Railway Station give you really some eye damage

#Nathancuty managed them all alone, MIL help him actually back

See that Chinese guy there? He is a head taller than me!

Have you ever travelled with a tour group?

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Chinese Wife, Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family, Crazy Germans, Our cute son, Travels

Few Days in Cologne

April 3, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 64 Comments

This week we had a special little trip to Cologne, better known for Germans under the name Köln. So what brought us down to Middle Germany, the babaric part south of the river Elbe? My wife had some business to attend there so we decided to make a quick three-day holiday in Cologne. As my mother’s birthday was at the same time we invited my parents to come with us (of course we paid everything ). Somehow luck was on our side and I was able to get a good deal for two rooms and two nights at the Hyatt, let’s just say the breakfast is really good at least for people like me and not so special for people like my Chinese wife…

First some background info about Cologne. It is the fourth biggest city in Germany with a bit over 1 million inhabitants. The city has many famous landmarks with the Cologne Cathedral being probably the most well-known. During the Second World War 95% of the city was destroyed and the population had been reduced by over 90%, no wonder it was even called “world’s greatest heap of rubble”. Even though Cologne had been reduced to basically nothing it was rebuild again with reconstruction work lasting until the 1990s. You can check out pictures of how the city looked like after the war on any search engine and it is really amazing how people were able to rebuild it all again.

Our journey started on Tuesday morning but we wouldn’t arrive in Cologne until late afternoon due to terrible weather and several traffic jams. Under normal conditions the drive would usually take roughly five hours but in our case it took more than seven hours, no joy…really. Especially Nathan was a bit odd during that trip as he did not fall asleep at all and was full of energy until the late evening hours. Our hotel was located in a just perfect location as it is just few minutes away by walking from the city center. All you have to do is cross the Hohenzollern Bridge and you are standing right in front of the Cologne Cathedral. The Hohenzollern Bridge itself is one of the landmarks of Cologne and also famous for the thousands of love padlocks placed on the fence between the footpath and the railway lines.

k13 — Cologne Cathedral in the early morning hours

The second day my wife had to be at another hotel already at six AM for her appointment and as it was still dark I walked her there. On my way back to our hotel I took a route through the still empty city center and could take some nice pictures. Later that day we all went once again to the city center and walked by few famous landmarks, the main shopping street and went into the Cologne Cathedral. The Cathedral is just huge, walking around the insides reminded me on the Halls of Moria from Lord of the Rings due to the giant pillars. Visitors can also climb a spiral staircase to a viewing platform at 98m above the ground. I don’t know if it is possible for visitors to climb also the towers which reach up to 157m above ground. Even though we had a wonderful and very filling breakfast we were getting hungry at some point and went to eat at Oma’s Küche (Grandmother’s Kitchen) which is known for its Schnitzel dishes. Though it is very simple food it is still very delicious and more than just filling as the portions are pretty big. In the evening my wife and I went to the Spring Funfair just few minutes away from the hotel. Perhaps you remember one of my blog posts about the funfair at my hometown and how disappointing is was for me to see how small it had become. Well, the funfair in Cologne was so full that it was sometimes impossible to move around. It seems that at least in bigger cities the funfairs are still well visited.

On our last day we left Cologne right after breakfast as we were afraid to be stucked in multiple traffic jams again but to our surprise nothing major happened and we arrived in the afternoon. All in all it was a very nice trip and I recommend going to Cologne in case you are for some time in Germany. We had planned to visit some more places in Cologne such as the Chocolate Museum and other landmarks around the city but the weather was first of all not the best during those days and we just had too little time.

View from our hotel towards the city center

Hohenzollern Bridge with the famous love padlocks

View from another bridge towards the city center and Hohenzollern Bridge

Great St. Martin Church and the Cathedral in the background

Nathan is a bit smaller than the Cathedral

View towards the hotel and some buildings of Deutz

Have you been to Cologne before?

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Surviving New Year

January 3, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 29 Comments

My first post for this very young year is about how we celebrated New Year. For some little info on how we celebrated Christmas check out this post from last week. Right from the beginning I must add that I have no clue on how to properly celebrate New Year here in Germany nor do I have any clue on how it is done in Finland. In case there are certain traditions please feel free to tell me!

New6 — The Table for the Eating Marathon

During all my childhood each New Year was the same. It started each time by taking a walk through the nearby park in the morning, have the potato salad for dinner (no lunch!! I really wonder why!) at the old ladies place where we already had the very same dish on Christmas and then watch some TV and then fire some rockets to join all the other people who love destroying their money through fireworks. Really interesting, isn’t it? In Finland in comparison it was the first years more like a big party with my friends however the last few years it calmed down a lot for me and I just enjoyed it together with my wife by doing nearly nothing except visiting some friends for a nice dinner. This all changed when we moved back to Germany last year. Sure my parents still have their old routine but all in all we do it a bit different.

The thing is that we started to celebrate not only with my parents but also with my brother and his girlfriend. A mere potato salad wouldn’t do the trick so we “upgraded” and bought a Raclette table grill last year. I know Raclette ain’t a German tradition but hey, I have not a clue what is a real tradition in Germany for New Year so this should be fine as well. The thing is about having this grill is that we not only prepare the standard Raclette but also grill tons of other food…too much food. Since last year the New Year celebration has become an eating marathon and days after you still feel all those extra pounds you gained within few hours. Though we bought already only half the amount of food compared to last year there was still enough left to have a proper lunch the next day with the leftovers, at least we didn’t waste any food. My dear mother is not a big fan of celebrations so she spend most of the evening watching TV, avoiding all the eating. The good thing about it is that she could watch Nathan while we stuffed ourselves full.

One thing I forgot to mention, there is actually a “German” tradition we do/ watch each New Year. This tradition is to watch “Dinner for One” which is a comedy sketch which is originally written by the British author Lauri Wylie and was later on recorded by the German television in 1963. It is shown on nearly every German TV channel on New Year several times and is through that the most frequently repeated TV program ever. After all the eating, drinking and watching the same tv show has been done/ survived it is time for the final preparations for the countdown. As last year we went for this down to my parents apartment due to a special reason which I will mention soon. Anyways at my parents apartment we prepared again some Berliner, sparkling wine and the fireworks. By that time my mother was once again already entirely annoyed by all the people and noise but still she stayed for watching the countdown and the fireworks. So the reason for going to my parents apartment except of annoying my mother are the fireworks. My parents have a huge balcony from which we can fire all those rockets, saving us a trip to the streets or plaza outside and with it the dangers of being it by some misfired rockets.

As you can see nothing too special was done except drowning in food and annoying my mother. Nathan watched the fireworks this year again as he woke up once again shortly before midnight. I really wonder why he wakes up each New Year around the same time whereas all the other night he just sleeps through. Lets see what 2016 will bring, I hope it will be a turning point for my health and perhaps a less unhealthy next year New Year celebration.