Tag Archives: interracial family

The Joy with dear Mother-in-law

July 3, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 35 Comments

It has been now roughly 4 weeks since my dear Chinese mother-in-law arrived here in Germany. In the beginning I mentioned that nothing bad or weird had happened thus far. You can imagine that it was an exception and that she returned to her good old self within no time. I guess it was like the jet lag affected her that she was not able to pull of any stunts the first week. So what has happened since then?

She is once again a world champion in leaving her oily handprints all over the apartment. The windows, the tv screen, the cabinets, the glass wall and door between dining room and living room, the bathroom mirror, all windows and doors of the new car, the aquarium and heck even on the tiles on the floor you can find some of them. I am not even kidding when I say that there is her facial imprint on the sun roof of the car! I surrendered long time ago in trying to clean up everything on a daily basis, now I let the madness just happen and wonder how bad it might all look like when she is leaving in two months. Over the years I wrote in a few posts about the stuff she had broken such as some bowls, the car safety belt or the toaster. Nothing major has happened yet except of a broken plate and few chipped bowls but it seems she is trying hard to scratch our glass table. Why she is trying her best? The thing is she hits her legs daily several times on that table because it is glass and I clean it making it look pretty neat. She is not the biggest fan of having a super clean glass table as according to her she can not see it and thus hits her legs. Not that she is openly scratching the table but I have seen and heard many time when she scrapped with some bowl over the surface…

Now to the weird things. She is back again being her weird self. Who broke the plate? It wasn’t her. Who ran against the glass door? It wasn’t her, and so on. Also she has a rather odd way of perceiving on what is good. For example she was urging my wife to find our lost Zwilling nailcutter because according it so much better than the old one we still have. I must add she has actually never used it. When my wife was asking her why and what is so much better about it she just replies something along these lines “The brand is good, it is expensive so of course it is better”. Same applies to everything she has never tried or used herself. If by any chance the brand is well-known it must be great just like the old Iphone 3 she has which is according to her so much better than her new Oppo F1 in every aspect. Now she is also very upset with my wife that she has never time to go shopping. You know my wife is the whole day busy with work and MIL does not compute that there is no real way around it to earn money. Besides she got a wicked fashion sense, most of her clothes will remind you of some Circus artists. Her goal is always to find something cheap, but good quality and fashionable, indeed this resulted that she never bought anything over the past years in Germany or Finland. Not anything? Okay that is not right as she once bought a jacket which she even tried on but was in the end way too small for her and bed sheets which did not fit at all either.

I could of course go on with my rambling but I will stop for now as there is just more and more coming to my mind as soon as I start writing. There will be more coming about her but not today, perhaps in another month in case I don’t go insane till then.

Will this crazyiness ever stop?

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Few Days in Cologne

April 3, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 64 Comments

This week we had a special little trip to Cologne, better known for Germans under the name Köln. So what brought us down to Middle Germany, the babaric part south of the river Elbe? My wife had some business to attend there so we decided to make a quick three-day holiday in Cologne. As my mother’s birthday was at the same time we invited my parents to come with us (of course we paid everything ). Somehow luck was on our side and I was able to get a good deal for two rooms and two nights at the Hyatt, let’s just say the breakfast is really good at least for people like me and not so special for people like my Chinese wife…

First some background info about Cologne. It is the fourth biggest city in Germany with a bit over 1 million inhabitants. The city has many famous landmarks with the Cologne Cathedral being probably the most well-known. During the Second World War 95% of the city was destroyed and the population had been reduced by over 90%, no wonder it was even called “world’s greatest heap of rubble”. Even though Cologne had been reduced to basically nothing it was rebuild again with reconstruction work lasting until the 1990s. You can check out pictures of how the city looked like after the war on any search engine and it is really amazing how people were able to rebuild it all again.

Our journey started on Tuesday morning but we wouldn’t arrive in Cologne until late afternoon due to terrible weather and several traffic jams. Under normal conditions the drive would usually take roughly five hours but in our case it took more than seven hours, no joy…really. Especially Nathan was a bit odd during that trip as he did not fall asleep at all and was full of energy until the late evening hours. Our hotel was located in a just perfect location as it is just few minutes away by walking from the city center. All you have to do is cross the Hohenzollern Bridge and you are standing right in front of the Cologne Cathedral. The Hohenzollern Bridge itself is one of the landmarks of Cologne and also famous for the thousands of love padlocks placed on the fence between the footpath and the railway lines.

k13 — Cologne Cathedral in the early morning hours

The second day my wife had to be at another hotel already at six AM for her appointment and as it was still dark I walked her there. On my way back to our hotel I took a route through the still empty city center and could take some nice pictures. Later that day we all went once again to the city center and walked by few famous landmarks, the main shopping street and went into the Cologne Cathedral. The Cathedral is just huge, walking around the insides reminded me on the Halls of Moria from Lord of the Rings due to the giant pillars. Visitors can also climb a spiral staircase to a viewing platform at 98m above the ground. I don’t know if it is possible for visitors to climb also the towers which reach up to 157m above ground. Even though we had a wonderful and very filling breakfast we were getting hungry at some point and went to eat at Oma’s Küche (Grandmother’s Kitchen) which is known for its Schnitzel dishes. Though it is very simple food it is still very delicious and more than just filling as the portions are pretty big. In the evening my wife and I went to the Spring Funfair just few minutes away from the hotel. Perhaps you remember one of my blog posts about the funfair at my hometown and how disappointing is was for me to see how small it had become. Well, the funfair in Cologne was so full that it was sometimes impossible to move around. It seems that at least in bigger cities the funfairs are still well visited.

On our last day we left Cologne right after breakfast as we were afraid to be stucked in multiple traffic jams again but to our surprise nothing major happened and we arrived in the afternoon. All in all it was a very nice trip and I recommend going to Cologne in case you are for some time in Germany. We had planned to visit some more places in Cologne such as the Chocolate Museum and other landmarks around the city but the weather was first of all not the best during those days and we just had too little time.

View from our hotel towards the city center

Hohenzollern Bridge with the famous love padlocks

View from another bridge towards the city center and Hohenzollern Bridge

Great St. Martin Church and the Cathedral in the background

Nathan is a bit smaller than the Cathedral

View towards the hotel and some buildings of Deutz

Have you been to Cologne before?

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The Circus Next Door

March 6, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 31 Comments

One thing which is great about living here again in the same building where I grew up is the huge square next to it. As I wrote before that there are several times a year some events such as fairs or even traveling circuses. Last time I visited a circus here was over 15 years ago and just last September we missed Europes biggest travelling circus as my wife and Nathan were in China and I had to deal with other things. This week once again a circus visited my hometown and we finally had the opportunity to go there together as my wife never had been to one and of course neither did Nathan.

circ2 — The white camel looked rather dumb…

This circus was not the biggest which had visited this town thus far but also not the smallest. So far I have seen really small ones here where the tent could hold perhaps less than a hundred people and really big ones with a capacity of 4500 people! As you can see there are huge differences when it comes to these kind of events. Some circuses have a lot of animals in their performances and do not have any at all. Now I don’t want to go into any discussion about how the animals have to suffer in order to learn the tricks for the performances but especially as a young child a circus is something magical. I still have fond memories when a circus did a march through the city center with various animals such as elephants and giraffes. Of course this is forbidden these days but it left an impression in my memories which I will never forget.

When we planned to go to the circus performance we were not sure in the beginning whether Nathan would like it or could sit still for roughly two hours. But all our worries were for naught as he was so amazed by everything that he didn’t want to leave at all in the end. As the circus is one of the smaller ones they had only few people performing and all of them had several acts. For example the “announcer” was also playing his part as a clown and as a fire breather. Besides performances by the artists there were also some with animals such as Camels and various horses. In between they also had a short break in which children could ride those animals. The overall theme of this circus was “Frozen” (the Walt Disney movie). Right after entering the tent the kids were greeted by Kristoff the Snowman and during several performances the artists were dressed up as characters from that movie. The clown also did a great job by involving some people from the audience to do some things in the circus ring. Even though the program is rather slim compared to the bigger circuses it is still entertaining and a change from the everyday life.

All in all I must say that I enjoyed it a lot and also Nathans enthusiasm was really great. I hope there will be some big circus coming here again in the next years as we just missed last September the biggest traveling circus in Europe (Circus Krone). Anyways I am glad that we went there and now I am just hoping that Nathan didn’t learn anything stupid from the fire breather and starts eating up some lit candles….