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Crazy Family, Our cute daughter, Our cute son, Travels

The Family at Legoland Billund

October 14, 2018 CrazyChineseFamily 29 Comments

Last week we visited Legoland in Billund, Denmark. The whole trip to Legoland was rather spontaneous as we had no intention at all to go there this year but my wife found suddenly an offer (nearly 50% off) we just could not resist. Our little Nathan who is a giant Lego fan had no idea at all about visiting Legoland and we kept it a secret till the end. Lego is the most valuable toy brand in the world for the past four years or so when it surpassed Mattel. The brand has its roots in Billund, Denmark, where it still has its headquarters.

I’d say this is old Hans Christian Andersen

I had tons of Lego in my youth and so did my dear brother (who is 20 years older than me…) so Nathan got already a lot of Lego from my old sets and will receive more in the next years (old Pirate ships and of course lots of trains). I can’t really say why but I have always loved these toys and still love to “play” with it. For me it is just so fascinating what can be all achieved with these simple plastic bricks. Nathan quickly got a bit bored of Lego Duplo (which is for smaller children) and changed to real Lego when he was 2-3 years old. By now he has built on his own some sets for 8 + years old kids and together with me for 16+ years. The instructions are usually no problem at all for him but few smaller technic bricks can bring some difficulties.

Back to our trip to Legoland. As I said before we didn’t tell Nathan at all about this journey to Legoland, he only knew that we would visit some nice place far away. The theme park is roughly 2h away from our hometown by car so it was no problem at all for the kids. Even though we tried our best to keep it a secret from Nathan he eventually found out about it. We managed it really close to the theme park but just 5min away he spotted a road sign with “Legoland” written on it. Though our big surprise was gone it was still lovely to see how happy he was so we went to the check-in at our motel at the Legoland Holiday Village. Needless to say everything is Lego inspired there and our rooms had one of the old Pirate Themes (from the 1990s).

We had the bad luck that on both days it was raining. Thanks to the rain Nathan got his only souvenir, a Lego rain poncho. Even though it was raining on both days we had fun and even got in between some sunshine to warm up a bit. Each time the rain got too big we went into one of the inside locations such as the Atlantis by Sea Life Aquarium, some cafe or the 4D Cinema. Somehow we managed not to get soaking wet and let the kids have fun. As our visit to Legoland was so close to Halloween they had started to decorate the park a bit. This was not entirely to Nathan’s liking as he got scared a bit by a few things such as some witches or a Mummy sitting on a bench.

The park is very well maintained and clean. Nothing appeared to be worn out or dirty even though we were there during the off-season, on a Monday and it was raining. So the staff is doing a great job no matter the weather and time of the year. We had such a good time there with the kids that we definitely want to revisit the park again. Not that we go next year or so already but when Nathalie is also old (and tall) enough for some of the rollercoasters. This time she always had to stay behind with one of us and watch Nathan having the time of his life. Thankfully the kids were not too demanding and we were spared the fate of spending money on overpriced Lego in Denmark (+30-40% more compared to Germany!).

In case you are interested in visiting Legoland in Billund I recommend to stay at least for one night there to visit the park on two days. There is really much to do there, especially with kids so one day won’t be enough. Besides that I suggest also to eat in one of the restaurants in Billund as the ones in the theme park are a bit on the expensive side and really full the entire time.

This witch had one drink too many -> don’t drink and fly

Have you visited a Legoland before?

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Crazy Euopean People, Our cute daughter, Our cute son, Travels

Helsinki, Moominworld and Brahehus

September 2, 2018 CrazyChineseFamily 16 Comments

Now to the second installment of our holidays in Finland. I can’t say really why but even though Helsinki plays such big part of this trip I only have one single pictures from it! It might be because I lived there way too long or took last time enough pictures? No idea. So after one week at my parents cottage we drove to Helsinki to meet up with a lot of friends. With a lot of friends I mean really a lot to visit in just two days. Especially on our second day we had a tough schedule in which we met up with someone every hour from 10am till 6pm.

Only picture from Helsinki at Linnanmäki

But now to the beginning of the Helsinki trip. We were already late as we run into tons of traffic jams on the way which meant that we arrived 2 hours late to Linnanmäki the theme park in Helsinki to meet up with several Chinese friends. With Chinese friends I mean exactly the ones I wrote about meeting in Xi’an so you might guess what all went wrong in just two days. We had in Helsinki a lovely place to stay just 10min by car from the city center. However this meant that we were nearly one hour away from any other place we had to visit, talk about excellent planning again by my wife (just as in Xi’an!).

The second day we were supposed to meet with our Chinese friends at Ikea at 10am and then eat there later lunch. Yes, it did not work out that way. When we left at 9am and were half way to Ikea we got a call that they were just preparing once again beef noodles for breakfast. Yep, we had to reschedule everything, meet with other friends first and then went to Ikea to eat lunch on our own. Much later our friends arrived so we had coffee and cake with them. The rest of our Helsinki time was spent on meeting with other friends, checking on our old apartment and rushing on the third day to get early enough to our next location.

Nathan is not too sure what to think about this

The third day which was day number 10 in Finland we drove to Moominworld. From Helsinki it is a bit less than a three-hour drive as you will get stuck behind slow cars all the time. What to say about Moominworld? It is just a wonderful place for little children and also for adults. The amount of Japanese tourists was rather interesting but then again Moomins are still a big thing in Japan and they just opened/ are about to open a Moomin Theme Park over there. We had perfect (too hot) weather and explored the whole theme park for several hours. Everywhere you can find buildings from the different inhabitants of the Moomin Valley and character are walking around and interact with the visitors. We really enjoyed our time there even though Nathan was not too fond of meeting some of the character, especially Stinky and The Groke.

After Moominworld we drove to Turku Harbour to take our ferry back to Sweden. Well the drive through Sweden was nothing special once again but we had a longer stop at the Brahehus at Lake Vättern. Brahehus is an old ruin of a castle which sits about 270m above sea level. From there you have a stunning view over the countryside and especially over the Lake Vättern. The lake itself is so big that you can’t even see the other side. The entire length around the shore of that lake is around 300km, so it is a pretty big lake. At the castle we enjoyed the view and Nathan tried his best in boulder climbing but his mom and grandma were not so fond of it as it was rather high up there. After that trip we drove once again to my Uncle for a night and then left early morning to the second long drive through Danmark and back to Germany. With this our Finland holidays ended and normal working life got back immediately as we started work the same evening we arrived home.

Nathan with Moominpappa’s hat and walking stick

Have you heard about Moomins before?

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

Nathancuty at Thomas Land

June 17, 2018 CrazyChineseFamily 17 Comments

And another article about our trip in Japan. We had only seven days in that wonderful country and way too much to see. As mentioned in the previous blog post Epic Tokyo we had a trip planned to Thomas Land. Ever since Nathan heard about Thomas Land in February he asked us all the time when we would go there. Little did he know how far that theme park is from our home and was getting more and more excited each day. So when the big day arrived he was so happy and jumping around non-stop. Once again my wife’s cousin joined us to help out and of course play with Nathan.

We left shortly after breakfast from our Airbnb house to Shinjuku station which was just 20min away by foot. From there we took a train to Otsuki Station where something very special would take us further to Fuji-Q Highland. Nathan had no idea that we would board a special Thomas Themed train to get to the park. In that train you could take pictures with different “Trains” and the kids could pretend to be driving the train itself. Our little boy was busy the entire journey to the park “steering” the train. Meanwhile MIL was complaining as usual about the aircondition and was the only person in the entire train wearing even a jacket.

Once we arrived we got us something to eat at one of the restaurants at the Fuji-Q Highland park. The food was okay but not worth mentioning any further unlike all the other restaurants we visited during the Japan holidays. Thomas Land is just one little part of the entire Highland Park and it was so full there. Yes, it is very smart to go anywhere in Japan during the Golden Week and we will never do that again! Each ride had a waiting time of at least one hour and we decided plit up to go to different waiting lines so that Nathan could go at least on a few rides before the closing time of the park. He had tons of fun and also got some little Thomas souvenirs from the Gift Shop. In fact the gift shop was a bit too much for him as there were so many Thomas toys, shirts, cups and so forth.

After few hours in the park it was time for us to head back to Tokyo. for our last night there. We had some wonderful food again together with the cousin and her future husband and made plans for the next day. For the last day in Tokyo we headed to Odaiba for some last sightseeing. It was kind of interesting to be on a fully automated train to Odaiba. Here in Germany people distrust already automatic doors and in Japan you have trains running without any staff! Of course there had to be an October Fest in Odaiba making the whole area even more crazy with people. Our time in Tokyo was really wonderful and worth every Cent (very many cents…). The time just went by too fast and we did not really feel like leaving Tokyo already but we had other big plans for the following day as Osaka was next on our list!