Once again a new year has begun and I am really looking forward to it. This is not only because we are expecting in May a little sibling for Nathan but because the past two years were kind of – meh. For one there was the incredible terrible year of 2015 in which I got ill and then 2016 when recovery started.
I deem this year unworthy
Though things got better last year it was a really strange year as well. Not that anything bad happened during that year to us, in fact things were going rather smooth in total especially with our business. I’d say all the negative news during that year were putting everything and everyone a bit down. At points my wife was just too scared to fly as she expected terrorist attacks at the airport and we did not visit the local Christmas Market due to the attack in Berlin in early December. Perhaps also having MIL for three months with us put a dark stain on the year but then again it would have not worked without her here at all with us being busy with our busy business and Nathan not having any spot at the Kindergarten (on the waiting list now for nearly three years…).
In retrospect it appears that 2016 was actually rather good! It always depends on the perspective in the end. Though 2016 was after all pretty good I do hope for a better 2017 with less madness in this world. With this first post in the new year I also want to start blogging more regularly again, somehow I had always some excuses in the past half-year to skip one or two posts a month. My plan for now is to stick with the basic Sunday posts and hopefully being able to throw here and there some mid-week posts again about food, hobbies or actually some videos I am supposed to have uploaded already a year ago on my channel.
How was your year 2016 and what do you have planned for this year?
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Recently we decided to have a little holiday somewhere nice in Europe. Okay it is not that recent anymore as I actually wanted to write about it for three weeks but some computer troubles kept me at bay. At first we wanted to go to Ireland but due to some visa difficulties for my wife we settled for the Czech Republic, or to be more precise for Prague. From Hamburg it takes only a bit over one hour to get to Prague by plane which is rather nice compared to the 8 hour nightmares to China.
Somewhere lost in Prague
Getting from the Prague Airport to the city center is fairly simple as it takes only about 40 min, first by bus and then by metro and it is super cheap with the tickets costing only about 1 Euro something per person. Our hotel was located in the New Town, now don’t get some modern ideas about this so-called New Town as it was founded in 1348! For me as a German who is used that many cities don’t have much historical substance left the city of Prague is just amazing. Everywhere you look in the city center you see historical buildings. I thought that Dresden was already incredible but Prague is on a whole different level. We stayed for three nights in Prague, giving us enough time to discover the city on our own pace. All the locations we visited were within walking distance except the Prague Castle for which we took another 5 min metro ride. For a family such as us this is just perfect as it makes getting around so easy.
Look at that bubble!
Nathan developed right from the start his favorite spots in the city. For one there were those main locations where soap-bubble performers were active and another and most important place was Hamleys. I had no idea about this toy shop chain before as they don’t have any stores in Germany or Finland. Let’s just say the Hamleys store in Prague was a little wonder world (only 6.000 sqm…)for Nathan with a carousel in the middle of the shop, several slides (one going from the second floor down to the first!), many other different activities to offer, staff dressed up in some nice costumes and of course toys and more toys everywhere. I have no doubt Nathan could have spent the entire holiday there. When you are in Prague and have kids you need to visit that shop (okay, even without Nathan I would go there).
The mighty Saint Vitus Cathedral
On our first day we went around the area of our hotel. I was rather happy that our hotel was just a few minutes away from the famous Wenceslas Square yet another tourist site. Everywhere in that area are restaurants so it was no problem at all to find a new place to eat for each day. However I must say that it was a bit odd that nearly every second restaurant is either Asian or Italian, just like Little Italy and China Town combined right there in the middle of the city. Yet I don’t want to complain as it allowed us to give in my wife’s cravings for Asian food every day and then allowing me to choose another restaurant for dinner (I never get to choose usually!). Each day we tried to visit a few main attractions in Prague so we did cover at least the Wenceslas Square, Prague Castle, the Old Town, Charles Bridge any many other place within walking distance from our hotel.
Wenceslas Square
During the entire trip we wondered how this holiday would have been with MIL. For some reason wherever we go and she is with us it is just too much stress. We came to the conclusion that it must be because we do not only have to watch our for Nathan but for her as well. My wife once told me it is like having two children to look out for, with the older being mentally behind the younger one. I know sounds mean but Nathan knows the animals already better than his crazy Chinese grandmother.
Do try some of the Trololo, I mean Trdelník which can be found all around the city
All in all I can say that Prague is a wonderful city and I can only recommend going there at least for a couple of days. The city has so much to offer from all the history, over the food and last but not least the beer. For us this was now the last trip we will take in a while due to some reasons to which I will come in some later blog post. I do hope that after 2017 we will be able to travel once again. Oh and sorry with the following flood of pictures.
Outside of the Castle
View from the outside of the castle
I carried Nathan and his push car up these stairs just to find out afterwards that there was a road leading up on the other side
One of the Metro Stations
Get some Trololo!
And here you go with a Trdelník
Old Town Square
The Astronomical Clock
What a cute blue house
Look at the Artwork
and here too!
More bubbles
They have been cycling for a while…
Panorama pic from the Charles Bridge towads the Prague Castle
I got something on my head #Nathancuty
More red
My wife loved the pink house the most
more and more bubbles
Inside of Hamleys
Minecraft, sadly I wasn’t allowed to play by my wife
Some lego
R2D2 and BB8
Have you been already to Prague or plan to go there at some point?
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Here we go now with the second part of our holidays in Finland. Today the blog post will be a bit different, similar to the article Nathan’s World from 2014. We had a great time at grandparents cottage for the first 1 1/2 weeks but it was time to leave and travel to Helsinki for another four days before returning back home.The trip started too early for me, my mom woke me up so early that it was still dark outside! I can’t remember really what all happened but suddenly granny kissed me and said goodbye. Before I could do anything I was in grandpa’s car and we were driving somewhere. As always I fell asleep in the car and woke up in some weird town where we took a bus. Dad mentioned something about “This is so cheap, cheaper for all of us than a single train ticket!”. I don’t know how cheap that is but I was certainly not comfy in that bus. It was soo full of tall people and the bus driver was making weird Finnish jokes over the microphone all the time. At least I was able to sleep a bit more and when I woke up, guess what, yeah another city again. What a strange thing, seems like each time I sleep these days I wake up somewhere else. My parents talked about this strange place called Helsinki, can’t remember that I was ever here before though.
There are really many people in this Helsinki
From this strange Helsinki place we went by bus to another strange Espoo place. There some Chinese man waited for us at the bus station and helped my parents to carry some stuff. We all went to an apartment and it was full of people and even a little princess! All the people were talking non-stop so I went to play a bit hide and seek with the little princess, what fun that was. It got even better when daddy finally had the airbed ready for some non-stop jumping action with the princes. This “bum bum 跳跳 (Tiao Tiao)” is soo much fun, can’t understand why my parents looked so annoyed. Anyways at some point I was forced to go to sleep again but at least when I woke up I was still at that great place with the airbed.
Me and the princess
After getting some breakfast from Chinese crazy granny we took once agin a bus back to this Helsinki place. My parents surely surprised me when we went to this wonderful theme park called Linnanmäki. Wow it was so much fun there and it seemed my parents didn’t even use any of this strange money thing. Still don’t understand this money, they need it for everything but always complain that they don’t have enough. Crazy Chinese granny was doing stupid stuff again and I nearly had to throw up after being in a ride with her as she was spinning this wheel all the time. Mommy was kind of angry with granny later but it seems that granny didn’t do anything wrong and that it was actually mommy’s fault, I don’t really understand granny sometimes. The food at the theme park was wonderful, so many french fries and ketchup! We should eat there more often. Later daddy went away to meet with uncle Tatu and some other friends and he only returned shortly before I was going to sleep, they must have a lot to talk about.
Crazy granny is scary
Next day I woke still up at this place, are we staying here forever? We all went again to strange Helsinki and went to a place full of Moomin stuff! Wow, so many Moomins everywhere but suddenly we left and I didn’t get anything, bad people. A bit later we were at some place eating Chinese food, it just tasted like China, we should come back here more often. Afer this we were in some kind of park and there were so many children. Even the police was there and I think my parents tried to get my arrested as they always wanted to put me on some police motorcycle, good that I fought against it, I am too young for the prison. Daddy called this Lasten Festarit at Töölönlahti, no idea what that is but it was fun. Mommy showed me some kids who were doing kicks and said that I would do this Tae Kwon Do as well soon, looks certainly interesting I just hope they have french fries as well there. There was so much to do together with the little princess, jumping, running, singing, eating lollipops but somehow the old people looked so tired, what a lazy bunch. We left the park and crazy granny pointed out some sea gulls but daddy said that it was actually a swam, don’t know what is true.
The sea gull/ swan
We left those nice people and went together with mommy, daddy and crazy granny to some restaurant were other people were waiting for us. Guess what there were two other little princesses and we had so much fun running around, unplugging some lights and having crazy granny running after us all the time. I don’t know when we got back to the airbed place but I woke there up again later. Something was wrong as it was too early again and we took a big car called taxi where we put all our stuff and drove to Helsinki again. There we took this great train and shortly after that we were again at the airport where I had been few times before. Crazy granny was doing crazy things at the security control again, she is just so funny but the security staff didn’t seem to like her funny stuff. Anyways it seemed that the great fun in Finland was over because later we arrived in Hamburg again and took once again a bus, I am getting sick of these buses…
Linnanmäki is so much fun
This thing is getting higher…
too high!!
I just love trains
Daddy is waiting for me I think
What should I do here? Oh, should I kiss the princess? Hehe, I kissed a princess ^.^
I am in control of this
Noooo, too fast crazy granny
So many weird yellow things
See, I ride in an egg!
So many people here
Some singing with the grown ups
A snake 😮
Don’t understand this but daddy was laughing
How do you like bus trips?
Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore I also have a YouTube Channel in which some videos might pop up from time to time
Crazy Chinese Family 