Tag Archives: German-Chinese mixed baby

My 100th Blog Post

February 1, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 45 Comments

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.

100th1 — 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!

100th2 — #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

January 25, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 81 Comments

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.

CIMG2504 — 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…

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.

NathanLight — 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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Crazy Family, Our cute son

Amazing Year 2014 Review

December 7, 2014 CrazyChineseFamily 33 Comments

2014 was a really amazing year for me and my family. So many great things happened and we just had really much luck with everything. I am not even sure that I remember to write down each and every single good thing of this year in this post as there are just too many things which pop into my head.

But lets start with the beginning.

In January the time of Nathan birth was approaching and with it also my mother-in-law three-month stay in our apartment. But, back then the year started not so well as several bad things actually happened. First of all I got final answers from several Universities that they did not choose me for their programs, furthermore freelancing was going very bad and I could not find any stable job at all. To make things even worse we did not find any apartments for our future in Germany and much of our savings were consumed by our car.

However wonderful February happened. It started with MIL arriving in Finland and giving us already a lot of excitement. Excitement in both ridiculous but also few annoying ways. But what do you expect when three people are living together in a 40m² apartment and one of them is just going crazy as her baby is already due for over 10 days…

Yes, Nathan was seemingly feeling too comfortable in his mother’s womb and extended his rental contract by 14 days! On February the 21st it was then his big day and he joined this world and our family. Both mother and baby were healthy and were able to leave the hospital after two days and come home.

March came and with it our new apartment in Germany. After so many months searching for an apartment and losing another bidding process this apartment basically fell into our hands. My parents had helped an old man for many many years in our building and he passed away in March. What we did not know was that my parents and I would inherit everything he owned!

April was the month we went to Germany and started our first step in the long-lasting renovation process of our apartment. It was also the month when Nathan got baptized, to be precise he got baptized on Easter Sunday. Usually it is impossible to get a baptizing day on Easter as it is a very popular date however we were offered a date and we accepted without knowing that it would be on Easter Sunday…

May came and MIL left. Probably I shouldnt be so happy but I was very glad when she finally left Finland after spending three months with us. Of course she was a great help but enough is enough after such a long time. In May also my parents came to Finland to spend their summer in the cottage.

June was our “holiday” in the cottage where Nathan gathered his first fishing experiences and played first time in ice-cold Finnish lake water. Tallinn was another good thing which happened as we went together with other friends for a short two-day trip there to relax and eat well (at least I did eat very well).

In July nothing really good happened except that Germany won the Football World Championships! Oh, and there was yet another journey through Finland and to our cottage.

August we had our great holidays on Rhodes which we won through an online prize competition! After that we said our goodbyes to our friends in Finland, packed our last belongings and went again to our cottage to relax a bit before starting our journey to Germany.

Then the day of moving to Germany came in September. With two cars we drove from our cottage to Helsinki to take a ship to Germany. After two days on that ship, in a tiny cabin with four people, one baby and two bunnies we arrived and started shortly thereafter the last huge step in the renovating process. Much work was ahead of us but I did it with pleasure as I knew it would be worth it. However September was also full of exhausting runs through the city to get us all signed up, get social numbers and get my wife the German residence permit.

In October we celebrated my fathers 73rd birthday and an end of the renovation work was in sight. We got my wife signed up for the German language course and Nathan was doing of course very well.

November, lovely November. We finally moved into our new apartment and to sweeten up the month I finally got a job, a job I have hoped for so long time as we got with it our health insurance.

Now we are here in December. Christmas is ahead, presents still have to be bought so what good thing could still happen? Well, I am working now on finally “refreshing” the blog, something I had planned already for nearly a year. How will it look like? Lets see, it will be probably a surprise for me too! Just wait and see what new things I have in mind for my Crazy Chinese Family. Furthermore I want to thank you all who are reading this blog and thus give me motivation to go on to write down the weird stories of my family.

My crazy Chinese Family I married into…