Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law, Travels

Neumünster Zoo

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Another blog post about a Zoo? Yes, as you can see I really do love to visit those places. This particular Zoo is a pretty small one here in my hometown. During my childhood I have been there very often and in the past years also again several times with my wife and some friends. The best thing about this Zoo is that it is close by, really just 15 min by bicycle or 5 min by car.

It has been found 1951 as a place where only animals from this region were shown. They kept this idea for a long time but later expanded and have now also monkeys, polar bears and penguins. The entire place is located within a part of the local forest which gives you a different feeling for the place than other Zoos which are normaly not so heavily grown into a forest.

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The polar bear died few months later due to high age

 

At least during my childhood the little shoats (baby boars) were able to squeeze below the fence and ran crazily around harassing visitors to give them some food. I don’t know if it still the case as I have been in the Zoo in the past years only during winter time. Another nice thing there is the Barbary macaque enclosure as you can enter it and walk on a path through. Usually all the Barbary apes will come to the path expecting some food or just try to grab anything you have in your hands.

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Barbary ape posing with her child

 

All the pictures are from our visit there in 2010. I believe it was the first time for me there in over 10 years and much had changed such as the new penguin enclosure and the monkey park. As you can see there are goats…many goats, too many goats! The goat world is located next to an old farm building and is very popular with the kids (nearly as popular as the playground). You can enter the enclosure and feed the goats but often you have to watch out that those demon animals don’t get too greedy as they might follow you later on through half of the park (did I mention that they can leave their enclosure?). Now that I think about it there are actually few animals enclosures you can enter and feed the animals with the food bought at the ticket office.

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My brothers girlfriends best friend at the Zoo

 

Even though this is just a small Zoo with very limited funds they still manage to keep everything well maintained unlike the Chinese ones I have been to so far. The animals seem to be taken good care of and nowhere is trash to be found except of course the trash bins. Especially the trash thing however might be more related on the general attitude of the people as in China I even saw some throwing trash and even cigarettes on the animals.

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Gaots AND Geese chaising us!

 

In May few Chinese friends from Finland will come over for a week or so and I had the idea to visit the Zoo with them. During that time also MIL will be still with us so we can just leave her in the goat enclosure as she seems to like it with those animals.  Hopefully she will stay there for some time but I still believe dropping her at the Outlet Center for a week is the more effective way to get rid of her for a while.

 

 

Do you know any small Zoo’s such as this one?

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Crazy Family

My 100th Blog Post

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Today is a special day as it is the 100th post on this blog.  It all started in August 2013 when I decided to write down few stories about my mother-in-law and some things which were on my mind about China.

Especially in the beginning I had no real idea what I wanted to write about and my stories and writing style in general was even worse than now! Looking back it is really interesting to see how I slowly began to improve from article to article. Right now I am still far away from what I have on my mind for my writing style, the blog and also on all the topics I would love to cover.  But not only did the blog change over time also our family life changed  during the past 1 1/2 years of blogging.

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Stockholm in the Summer of 2013

 

Back in 2013 we just had our two main wedding ceremonies, one in China and one in Finland. My in-laws  had stayed with us in Finland for nearly four weeks and I was just exhausted by all the events. My wife was in her 3rd month of pregnancy and we were looking forward to our baby. I was mostly unemployed and had only few projects going on which were never really satisfying. So what made us think of moving to Germany out of nowhere towards the end of 2013? I wanted to do a master degree in Finland and was about to enroll for the universities when my wife decided from one day to the next that we would have much more possibilities in Germany. Possibilities not only when it came to my studies but also chances of getting a job for me and better environment for my wife to start her own business.

2014 arrived and was amazing as I wrote already in a previous post. We have a great little boy who will have his first birthday in 20 days, we have a great apartment and I got a stable job for the next years. Perhaps I will continue there or follow initial plan and do some more studies. Now we have 2015 and things are looking good for our future and for the future of this blog as I have much (too much) material for new articles for still some time and there is no risk of having not enough to write about as MIL is joining us for a three months visit in April, Hooray!

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#Nathancuty and Mommy at the Christmas Market 2014

 

My biggest wish for this year is actually to do some more traveling. In August we will go to China again and we were promised already a trip to South Korea. However we would also love to go to Japan some day soon and when I think about it, there are just too many places to visit.

So now I thank all of you who follow my blog. Each comment helped me to improve and gave me also the needed feedback to continue. There are so many great blogs out there with great stories. Some helped me  on what places to visit, what to eat there, how to make life easier, some articles made me laugh and others made me nearly cry (men don’t cry!). I hope to read more stories from all of you and I do try to write more interesting posts.

 

Ps.  Don’t ask me about the featured image on top, just found it recently again and it does looks creepy

 

Do you blog and how do you feel when looking back to the beginnings on how your blogging world changed and your personal life as well?

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Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Germans

Living as an interracial couple in Germany

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Its been five months now since we moved from Finland to Germany.  Back in Finland we barely had any weird encounters when it came to our interracial relationship. Sure there was this one neighbour who occasionally broke parts of our car, or there was the creepy old lady talking about the supreme white race but otherwise there were not many troubles. Also communicating was never a problem as pretty much everyone spoke English. But now we live in Germany and life is a bit different here.

First of all I want to say that these are just my/ our experiences which are not giving any real overview what is going in Germany in general. With what shall I begin? Of course, registering in this country.

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Going to an Alumni of one of my high schools

 

My wife has the Chinese citizenship and thus needed once again a residence permit. It pretty much didn’t matter at all that she had already a permanent European residence permit as apparently Germany is playing its own game. Thankfully it was an easy process as we have a child, little Nathan, together who has the German nationality because of Jus sanguinis the right of blood. However even though it was an easy process and we had all documents ready it appears that no one in the immigration office knows a word in English. Furthermore Germany seems to have missed the digital age and everything is kept on paper in folders. I am not exaggerating when I say that over half of the office was full of extremely thick folders, the amount was unreal and was already comical in my opinion.

Next thing are some few people who are apparently troubled by foreigners. Even though Germany has already for a long time a high number of immigrants it seems that many Germans still haven’t adjusted to this. Weird looks on the street when we go for a walk are not that uncommon. Mind you, it is still far away from the constant stares you get as a foreigner in China but it is uncomfortable. I haven’t heard any bad comments yet except people wondering why I would marry a Chinese woman but we do have some odd neighbours. It seems some weird person is going through the paper trash to collect all mail which is addressed to us and takes them out to spread them all over the street. Only our mail…

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A group picture

In the same trash you also throw cardboard boxes of which we had plenty due to moving and buying a lot of new things for the apartment. Diligent me always flattens the boxes so that they don’t take too much space in the trash. But recently someone, probably the same person, started to reassemble these boxes and leave them there. Due to this we had already many complaints that our cardboard boxes are taking too much space etc.

What else makes life harder for us? Well, it is pretty much the language. As mentioned before, no one really speaks or wants to speak English. Going to the doctor for a checkup for the baby is a challenge as the doctors do not speak English. In general getting anything done is so hard here as they want also all documents in German. I do not even want to think about how much money we spent do get all kinds of documents translated AND verified.

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Nathan knows his Yoga but not German

 

The language problems continues with Nathan. We want to get him into a kindergarten but there will be most likely trouble that he won’t speak good enough German. You know, in many kindergartens they discourage growing up bilingual! It seems to me that Germany did not evolve at all in these aspects in the past half century.

I wonder when there will be a time when people won’t stare at us anymore in the streets, when they won’t make stupid comments when I say that I am married to a Chinese woman and that there won’t be an issue anymore to show proudly that German is just another language in your repertoire. I know that I shouldn’t really complain but some of these things are just annoying on a daily basis. Do I speak for every interracial couple in Germany? No, definitely not. It is so different here depending where you live and what the background of each interracial couple is. I just wish that in future Germany and its people will get some better idea on how things should work when it comes to integrate “foreigners” into their own weird German world.

 

Do you have own experiences to share about weird things in your country as an interracial couple?

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My crazy Chinese Family I married into…