Tag Archives: German-Chinese mixed kid

Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law

Fun at the family themepark Tolk-Schau

July 23, 2017 CrazyChineseFamily 14 Comments

Last week I mentioned already that we would visit a theme park soon. That visit actually happened just few days after writing that blog post. We had one of those rare sunny days here in North Germany and instead of visiting Lübeck we settled on going to the theme park. It was a wonderful day though it started not so well and ended very sad but more about that later.

Slides connecting different parts of the park

Right in the morning we had a doctor appointment for Nathalie for one of the first check-ups. Usually I would have gone with them as well but one of our bunnies was not feeling so well so I went with her to the veterinarian. After getting home I gave the bunnies fresh food and water and left to pick up the rest of the family from the doctor. Due to the veterinarian visit we were running already a bit late so we arrived in Tolk-Schau shortly before 1pm.

The park was full considering that the summer holidays hadn’t started yet in our province at that time. Nathan was so excited when he saw all the amusement rides. The theme park is family oriented and kids his age can go to nearly all rides as there are no “extreme” ones such as big rollercoasters. There were only a few which he couldn’t go to as they were age 7+. The kids can go to simple small slides, big carpet slides, take a small train around the park area, a family rollercoaster, trampoline areas, information areas regarding dinosaurs and much more. Needless to say that MIL could be found in many amusement rides as well, most of the time not standing in line and just entering the ride while kids were waiting for their turn…

In case you get hungry you can have a quick meal in the park, nothing fancy but good enough and cheap. The theme park does not have a proper restaurant because of one simple reason: you can rent BBQ huts! We did not rent ourselves one this time but we will do so for the next visit. I must say you get very hungry when going around the park and smell some delicious BBQ from different huts. When I was younger and went there with some friends they often rent those huts. Not only can you prepare yourself food there but it is a perfect place to have a “base” to return to and store all the things you don’t want to carry around whole day.

All in all Tolk-Schau is perfect for kids till the age of 12. I myself enjoyed the park a lot in my youth till I was 14. Here is a little video I found the park on youtube. It was a great day for us there and even my wife tried some of the amusement rides however she was even scared of the small family rollercoaster. This is a bit surprising as back in the day when we just started dating we went to a theme park in Helsinki and tried out all the rollercoasters there! In the end of the day Nathan was so tired that he fell asleep immediately after getting to the car. The day would have been wonderful except that it ended in a very sad way. When we got home my wife found our poor bunny dead in the cage. At least that little animal didn’t have to suffer too much in the end as she got at the veterinarian an injection against the pain. Now we have only one bunny and she is very passive these days, not entering the area of the cage at all where her sister had died.

Have you been to a “family” theme park before?

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

https://www.facebook.com/CrazyChineseFamily

https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

https://www.youtube.com/

Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law, Our cute son

Three Months Survived

September 6, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 42 Comments

Somehow we managed it yet again, MIL is back in China and thus the three months of terror are over. Over the past years I had a couple of these posts regarding her leaving again and what we/ she learned. This will be pretty much such a blog post again as I am just lazy right now and don’t want to think too much.

Indeed she is leaving but the question is now, has she learned or improved since last year? No, not at all. She is still the same chaotic, messy and crazy person as all the years before. Sure she does promise to change this and that each time but that will never happen. Remember when I wrote all those years back that she was shocked how well people treated their dogs by taking several walks each day with them etc.? Back then she said already “I will do this with my dogs as well!”, as you might guess they are still every single day in their cage to this day. Okay, sometimes she does take a walk with them but I believe it is more to annoy other people as those dogs just poop in front of every entrance they feel like.

milgone2 — I am not a dog but feel insecure with that lady

Now to the things which actually do happen here in our home. I noticed over the years that she in fact loves to use oil when cooking. That is nothing new in Chinese kitchen but she kind of increased the dosage each year. When she was with us in 2014 for three months she needed about every 3-4 weeks a litre of oil for cooking. Last year it increased already to every 2 weeks. Back then my wife already complained that this is just too much oil but she defended herself “your useless father is using much more oil, he needs a litre every weeks when cooking. See I am not as bad as him!” or something along these lines. Yep this year she managed to actually use up every single week one litre of oil! As you can guess the kitchen looks accordingly. We have oil splatter even on the opposite side of the stove and on the roof! It is just insane as every few weeks I had to basically drain the kitchen hood of oil.

Okay okay she was once again a huge help with Nathan and providing us with food (abide it might not have been always eatable). We were especially concerned that Nathancuty might have trouble readjusting to a life without his Chinese grandmother but we worried for nothing. He did not even care when she left him at the airport and did not even say “Nai nai 奶奶” at all since Wednesday. Seems like he is perfectly fine without her. Only trouble now is to get him back on earth after being spoiled non-stop for the past three months.

milgone1 — Yay all packed up and ready to be shipped to China!

I left out one thing now and that is cleaning. The first weeks I really tried hard to keep the apartment and car clean but it was just so futile. It is like trying to stop and oncoming storm by blowing against it. She must have some magical dirt creation tricks as otherwise I can’t explain it. I mob the floor room by room and once I am done to get some rest I realize that the first few rooms are already full of “dark footsteps” like she would be putting ink on her feet or something. Few days before she left we went to a beach and when we went back to the new car my wife told her to carefully clean the shoes. Once we were back home and I wanted to get Nathan from his seat it looked like she had dragged half the beach with her. There was barely any black from the car carpet left, just sand, no kidding. Upon asking she told us that she tried real hard but the sand wouldn’t come off, yeah right she just had those slippers while as my profile boots did not give me any issue. Just thinking about cleaning after her could be an own blog post again so I just stop right now before I remember too much and bring nightmares to myself.

You have anyone you need to clean “after”?

https://www.facebook.com/CrazyChineseFamily

https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

https://www.youtube.com/

Crazy Euopean People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law, Our cute son, Travels

Holidays in Finland Part I

August 14, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 39 Comments

First of all I am sorry for not posting any articles for the past three weeks but there were many things happening. During my “absence” we were two weeks in Finland and then the past week we were just too busy with work. At first I wanted to have only one blog post about our holidays in Finland but I quickly realized that I took first of all too many pictures and second that there is just such a clean-cut between our time at the cottage and those days spent in Helsinki. This first blog post about the holidays in Finland will be all about the days spent together with my parents at the cottage and next week will be about the four-day stay in Helsinki.

We had planned our holidays in Finland for some time as we wanted to meet up with some friends and because I also had to help with some things at the cottage. It was no trouble at all to find some good plane tickets but we somehow missed to check at first what time those flights would be. So we ended up arriving in Finland on a nice monday evening at 10pm! Sure it doesn’t sound that bad but the thing is that we had to get still to my parents cottage roughly 4 hours away by car. My dad picked us up with enough coffee in the thermos to keep me awake for the journey to the cottage. It wasn’t the most pleasant car ride I had as by the end of July the days were getting shorter again which meant it was nearly pitch black around midnight, half the trip we had heavy fog hindering us and worst of all we had to check non-stop for moose crossing the road. Yes moose as they are very common in Finland and they do love to come out of the forest at night to pester the roads leading to many dangerous situations which even end up deadly few times a year for both the animal and the person behind the steering wheel. Luckily we did not see any moose this time on the road but it still took a lot of energy to look around the whole car ride.

nummi14 — #Nathancuty making sure that his little cousin is not breaking the poor dolphin

Nathancuty, mother-in-law and my wife fell asleep pretty much as soon as we left the airport and only my dad stayed awake to keep me company while driving. The amazing thing is that as soon as we arrived at the cottage around 2:30 am Nathan decided to wake up and check out the whole place. It took over one hour to catch him running around and he was rather upset that we took him upstairs to sleep as he wanted to still spend time with his Mummo and Opa (Mummo is Finnish for grandmother and Opa is German for Grandfather). The following days meant work for me, a lot of work as I helped out with mowing the lawn, chopping wood, trying to get the outboard motor working again (I failed), cutting away reed in the lake with a scythe and last but not least making myself extra work by starting to build up a wall made out of large rocks. This might give you an idea that the days at the cottage was less holiday for me and more like a working camp. Besides all the work I also joined my father on the early morning bicycle rides around the lake, yes I had a full-time job there!

MIL, Nathancuty and my wife had a bit less to do. In fact they had a lot of free time there when they did not have to watch out for Nathan. That little fellow was rather keen in running around the cottage all the time, especially to the lake. Not that we don’ trust this big boy with his judgement when it comes to his non-existent swimming skills but it is better to make sure that he is fine. In their free time MIL, my wife and my dad went over to the neighbour’s property to harvest the area for raspberries. I believe they collected around 10 litres within a few days and my mother was fairly busy in making every day several jars of raspberry jam. We might be probably soon sick of raspberry jam as my parents come back to Germany next month with their car loaded with the sweet death in jars…

One of the exciting days was when my cousin came over with her three children. You might remember her little daughter from this post when Nathan was fairly jealous of all her hairs. Let’s just say he is probably even more jealous now as she is sporting a lot of hairs while as Nathan might be better off with a monk hairstyle. During all the time at the cottage my dear Chinese mother-in-law had also some stuff to discover. For one thing that ducks actually survive out there in the nature without her feeding them, that seagulls are not ducks and that a rabbit is not a deer. Yes you read it right, she actually thought one evening that she saw a deer on our property and even described it “It was this big (waving her arms in huge motions) and it had very very long legs”. The thing is that there are not deers in that part of Finland but she was very sure that it was no rabbit because “I know how rabbits look like, especially because you have those two bunnies!”. When we all went to investigate and she pointed to the place where she saw the deer a small rabbit came running out of the bushes and she was all like “Look there is the deer”. Got to love her own believe sometimes.

nummi6 — #Nathancuty driving a small tractor

During one of the last days we were invited for lunch by our cottage neighbours who own a farm about 30 driving minutes away. The farm is just huge and they had on a wall a document stating that the farm has been in their family since the 1670s! That is certainly a long line of farming business there but sadly it might soon end as it is just not profitable anymore these days. After a delicious lunch we went for a little walk around and also stoped by their Galloway cattle herd. Last time we had visited them back in 2014 when Nathan had is first encounter with them. The whole area was just breathtaking (not because of the smell from the farm!) and I do hope we can go there next year again. All in all I can say that it was something special for me to visit Finland again and spend time at the cottage. The house at the lake has been now in my family for 24 years and I spent every summer there in my youth so for me it is like a little safe haven, a place I will never forget.