Chinese Food in Germany

Probably everybody can understand that we miss Taiwanese food. So apart from learning how to cook them ourselves once in a while we check out what kind of Chinese dishes one can find in Germany. And a couple of days ago in a supermarket, I came across this tasty dish:

The funny part is not that it is a "ready-to-serve-dish" in a bag, but the content. Everybody probably like fried noodles and sweet and sour. With this dish you don't have to decide if you want to eat fried noodles or some sweet and sour dish - this wonderful bag gives you both. It is "sweet and sour fried noodles".

Making Our Apartment Habitable

When you rent an apartment in Germany it seems to be usually totally empty, naked. No furniture at all, empty walls which have to be wallpapered or painted. Sometimes there is a kitchen included, but our apartment didn"t have a kitchen. That was annoying, but even more annoying was  (or is actually) the shower. It is a nice spacy bathroom, with bathtub and seperate shower, and even two sinks. But what is wrong with this picture? How can there be no shower cabin or anything to keep the water from drenching the floor? That is one stupid decision by the organisation renting out the apartment - without a somewhat useful shower curtain or cabin.

Anyways I spent a couple of weeks painting three bedrooms, one hallway, a kitchen (only part of the wall needed painting) and a big living room. That cost me around 150 Euro for paint and tools. If I had wallpapered it, it would have cost like 100 Euro per room. I also learned something about painting walls - be patient and take the extra steps to prepare the room (cover, tape, etc.) it really helps to actually get a faster and better paint job done. Also to cover the floor - don't use plastic foil. It always moves around, amd it never covers the parts you want to cover. Better are big cartons which you unfold. Like from new furniture. And what a coincidence - I got some new furniture recently, and i really found these unfolded cartons to work great for covering the floor.

Altogether the interior of the apartment is taking shape. We got some furnitur, some items for a kitchen and we build some shelves ourselves (with the help of my sister and her friend).

So here are some pictures of the current status of the apartment.

the long hallway. After the paint job and just a couple of posters (there is also a Taiwan map we put up in the hallway) it already looks much nicer. Hallways are a very nice or useful aspect of German apartments.

The kitchen - before

also before:

When they delivered the kitchen items (sink, cupboard - see the following picture) the plate came without the hole for the sink (which seems to be the standard for this kind of delivery according to my brother). I guess most Germans are well equipped with saws etc. Fortunately there is a big OBI market 5 minutes from us. So i could ask them to make the hole (for another 35 euro) and then i was able to assemble the sink, the faucet, etc.

This is how the kitchen looks now. On the other side are the fridge and two selfmade shelves.

The master bedroom before

The "now" picture is missing - but it has a nice color, a bed, and a closet now.

Here the kid's room before

after the painting job

and now

(please pay attention to the lamp - a "car" lamp, and it is handmade by my sister

and a couple pictures of the living room, before

and now

we are still missing a sofa or something like that. Hopefully that will come soon. Generally I enjoy working on the apartment, but sometimes I think it is crazy to put so much effort in a rented apartment.

Move the Family from Taipei To Stuttgart, Part 3 - The Flight

The last section of our final family move - the flight from Taipei to Frankfurt (via HK and London).

My biggest concern was how my son would react to his first flight (especially such a long flight - altogether 18 hours). But - he had a blast. No matter if in the airport or on the plane - he was running around, talking to people, playing and trying out things (fortunately the plane doors are secured).

Another thing I would like to mention is the help we got from several people during the whole flight.

There was for example the lady at the Cathay Pacific counter in the Taoyuan Airport who helped us with re packing our luggage to avoid too high a fine for excess luggage weight.

Or the guy at the passport control in the London Airport - we didn't have our boarding passes for the flight London - Frankfurt, and we were supposed to go to BA's service counter to get them. The thing was that we got off the plane (from HongKong) just in front of the passport control for fransferring passengers. And to get to the service counter and back would have taken another long walk and probably 30 minutes. But then the guy at the passport control (who i had asked for directions) told me that he were able to produce the boarding passes - and he did. So we could just continue directly through the passport control.

One exciting incident - our plane was most likely hit by lightening. Fortunately nothing happened so it is easy to think it was exciting. Probably not many people even noticed, but i was sitting right next to two of the flight attendants. And right after it looked like we were hit, I noticed how one of them got really nervous and started looking out of the window. The other stayed pretty calm but also kept looking out of the window, and he later confirmed that we were most likely hit by lightening.

Oh, and I fell asleep while eating, actually while chewing.

Other than that the flight was pretty normal and after 18 hours we arrived at the Frankfurt aiport where my brother was already waiting to help us for the last section of the trip from Frankfurt to Stuttgart.

Here my son enjoying the flight: