Tag Archives: chinese in germany

MIL’s Kitchen Weirdness

July 15, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 31 Comments

It’s been now a few days since my Chinese mother-in-law left Germany and it gave us enough time to rediscover our kitchen. Before her 3 months visit I already feared that the kitchen might be destroyed but thankfully it didn’t go that far. However there are a few things which are not really anymore the same. Right now I have to disappoint you as I did not take any pictures of the kitchen during MIL’s reign as it was just too much to take and I didn’t want to have any record of it.

So what did happen in the kitchen? As you can see in the featured picture above it is a rather “simple” kitchen without too many things being all around. Well, it stayed a simple kitchen but it got stuffed with all kind of things. The kitchen counters were filled to the brim with Tupperware, vegetables, medications, some kitchen equipment, trash and other stuff. The same fate the fridge had to go through…filled to the maximum with all kind of things. The worst part was that she simply forgot some things/ lost the overview so more than just once food started rotting in some corners. The ultimate horrible happening was right after she had left and my wife went through the fridge. She found one Tupperware with some unknown creamy thing inside which smelled cheesy…it was the rest of the whipped cream my brother and his girlfriend brought for his birthday cake 6 weeks ago! My crazy mother-in-law just saved up the rests from that day and forgot about them.

Also some things broke during those three months. One bowl we lost as she dropped it from the fridge (yes, bowls filled with food, sauces and unknown materials were always in the fridge), another bowl has a crack, one part of the kitchen counter vanished (a small part to cover a gap behind), the tile flooring suffered as well, the fridge defrost drain got clocked more than once and many other smaller things.

Then there are the just weird things such as her talking often about how less many other Chinese are cleaning the kitchen equipment and she actually showing the very first day how to do it right but then never doing it again. This resulted that I spent hours scrubbing every pot clean/ back to their metallic look rather than the brownish crusted look, scrubbing multiple times the induction hob plate, the filter of the kitchen exhaust hood (usually done once every six months, during her reign every 2 weeks to no avail as oil was just running down on it all the time) and still much more things still. She seems to really dislike cleaning in the kitchen otherwise I can not explain this whole mess. I do not even want to mention the rice cooker…I still got nightmare from cleaning it. In my opinion she is a kitchen demon to wipe out humanity with dirty kitchen rags and rotten “things” all around.

Have you experienced similar kitchen nightmares?

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

Discovering the Hanseatic City of Lübeck

July 12, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 29 Comments

My Chinese mother-in-law is gone now, she just left a few hours ago from Hamburg Airport and life goes on its normal path once again. This week was pretty busy as we had some little sightseeing tours in different cities around here which started with Kiel last week. The next stop on our sightseeing list was Lübeck, another port city in this state and roughly 45 min driving distance away from my hometown. I have been there before only for swimming competitions and once long time ago during a school trip and thus I had to check myself what to visit before going there.

Lübeck16 — Nice cafes are all over the place

Lübeck or the Hanseatic City of Lübeck is the second largest city in the state of Schleswig-Holstein and has around 200.000 inhabitants. It got its Hanseatic title back in the day and was known as the “Queen of the Hanseatic League” during the 14th century. Even though the city suffered also a lot during the air raids during the second World War there is still very much of the historic center left. Lübeck is also home to Niederegger. I know, many people outside of Europe are not the biggest fans of Marzipan and especially Asians have a dislike for it however for most people here it is just wonderful.

Lübeck1 — Lübeck recreated with Marzipan!

Enough of all the background info and lets start with our little trip around the city. We had luck with the weather as it wasn’t so hot anymore as the previous days and a little breeze from the ocean kept the air nicely fresh. After some confusing ride through the city (thanks to the GPS device slowly failing me…) we arrived at a parking garage and we could start our sightseeing tour. Okay, we actually headed straight to the restaurant I had picked out as it was already past noon and our stomachs were growling. Our destination was the restaurant “Kartoffer Keller” (Potato Celler) which had a variety of different dishes made out of, guess what, potatoes! The restaurant itself is located in the historic vault of the old Heiligen-Geist-Hospital (somehting like Holy-Spirit-Hospital). It looked pretty impressive in my opinion especially as I havent been before in a restaurant located in a vault. I have only read about them such as Leipzig’s Auerbachs Keller featured on Henry Lee’s blog Fotoeins. I surely enjoyed my meal which was of course with potatoes (grilled potatoes) with egg, some unknown vegetables (all vegetables are unknown to me, I just call them the green stuff) and a steak, more than enough for me. The women however are not really fond of German food so they did not enjoy it so much. Nathan was a real hero and after he finished his own baby food he helped to empty his mother’s plate, he surely does love German food!

After this was survived we started our sightseeing tour/ shopping tour. Sightseeing in a way that we went through the historic city center and took some nice pictures and shopping as the entire city center is filled with stores those two women just had to visit. This gave me the chance to go around on my own with the camera. Lübeck certainly offers a lot of opportunities to take pictures however I faced the dilemma of being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of photo opportunities that I gave up after a while and headed back in search of my family. Somehow this short shopping time was enough for them and they were ready to head back home but I decided to have a stop at St. Mary’s Church. This I did as MIL is a very religious person so I thought it might be interesting to take a look inside. However once we were inside and MIL realized that the entry fee was 2 Euros she didn’t want to go inside anymore. The entrance fee is basically there to finance the restauration work as this church got some years on its back and needs constant fixing as any other old building does but MIL did not really comprehend this and was asking my wife non-stop why there would be an entrance fee for a church…

Though the day seemed pretty short in Lübeck we did in fact spent nearly half day there and the only reason to head back home was because Nathan’s dinner time was approaching. I certainly hope to go to Lübeck with my wife again in the near future as there is still so much I want to discover in the historical city center. One thing became clear during this trip: No more German food for the two women!

The “Holy-Spirit-Hospital” being restaurated

This pictures shows just how massive some of the churches are

What do you think about entrance fees in historical buildings such as churches and what is your opinion about German food?

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

Spending a Day with the Family

June 21, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 21 Comments

I never really did any family research before nor did I try to stay really in touch with my cousins. This changed in the past couple of years as we were planning ourselves for a little family and now have our son. I figured since we were about to move to Germany last year it would be nice to get in touch with some of my relatives again. Not only to meet them again but also nice for Nathan to get to know his extended family. Here in Germany I have several cousins with their own little families. Okay, little is the wrong word as one of my cousins has herself now four children, one girl and three boys. Her second oldest child had her 11th birthday and we were invited to spend the day there.

We had been visiting her before so I was already prepared that four children mean also a lot of action going on non-stop. Once we arrived the little girl got her present, and the only guest she had over was yet another cousin (daughter of another cousin I haven’t seen in over ten years). Well, it wasn’t so much a children’s birthday party but more like an adult birthday as the children were either outside playing or in their rooms. We adults were drinking coffee and had some delicious cake in the beginning and later on BBQ. You could really see that my cousin was happy that her daughter was old enough that the parents didn’t have to come up with games and entertain the daughter and her friends as she was basically discovering her main birthday gift: her first mobile phone! Well, even though this meant there was less work on the birthday itself those other children of her surely still had too much energy and were basically everywhere.

Anne1 — Are you sure? – You don’t say! – OMG

Her youngest child is four and tried is best to copy his older brothers when it comes to terms of climbing trees resulting that he fell down. This fall actually created a huge bump on his head that made him appear like a unicorn. After five minutes of crying the world was fine for him again and he continued climbing the very same tree. I can only say that in case I fall down like that and hit my head I would be in hospital for a few weeks! Kids are just crazy when it comes to recover from such things. Nathan enjoyed his time as well by hunting with his 2nd cousins some bunnies, playing with their toys and being thrown around by the oldest boy who just loves little kids.

Even though we were there only for around 4 hours it was still a very exhausting day. Not only because of all the over eating but also due to all the action going on by the kids the entire time. We made also a deal with the little girl that she will be taking care of our bunnies during our holidays in China. Sure, we need to drive those bunnies extra to my cousin’s house but it will give us another opportunity to meet. Perhaps next time there will be other cousins of me as well, who knows. We also talked a bit about a family gathering as the last one was over ten years ago but in the end it will need some person who takes up the “leadership” and plans the whole event. It would be great to meet as a family again but it will probably depends when someone is able to start planning.