A new home…

After Danielle went home we have used a lot of our time to prepare for the future in China. In Denmark Danielle has been sorting and packing the remaining belongings, while Carsten in China has been receiving the 5 m3 of personal belongings we sent by ship from Denmark as well as scanning the market for air purifiers.

After a couple of weeks Danielle returned to China and we spend all of your spare time turning the leased apartment into our new home. We have unpacked all the boxes from Denmark with everything from our favourite wall paintings and family photos to kitchenware and clothes. I must say that it is nice to finally have more than 4 ties, 7 shirts and 2 pair of shoes for work :-).

It was a pleasure unpacking all the things we had missed for the previous 3 months and everything just seems to fit perfectly in the new apartment. However, since we left all furniture in our old apartment in Denmark, we had to go to IKEA to buy a few things (thank you Sweden).

We can safely say that it has become “hyggelig” and it now feels like our real home. China is an amazing place and we now have our own Scandinavian oasis to withdraw to if it should ever become too Chinese. The guest room has also been decorated, so we are looking forward to welcome all of you here – we guarantee that you will enjoy the trip.

Danielle is in Denmark again in order to fix the last work stuff (incl Visa etc). After that she can finally come here permanently and we can enjoy our new home together…’,’imgleft’,’IMG_0559.JPG’,’2014-07-12 02:58:38′,2075,7),(’02-09-2014′,’Carsten’,’To eat or not to eat…’,’It has been a while since the last update from us in China. It is definitely not because nothing has happened – on the contrary we have had many new experiences; from floating Avatar mountains to another visit to the Great Wall of China. We will not go into details from these trips, but you can find photos from both trips in the photo section. This update will be about one of our other passions – FOOD!

As you all know, we are big fans of good homemade food made from good fresh ingredients. So one of our big worries about moving to China were if we would be able to find good restaurants, – and if it was possible to get the ingredients needed for coking good western food at home. Our worst fears included being constrained to noodles and fried rice for the next three years.

Ingredients
Yes, it is possible to get ingredients to cook our favourite dishes at home, but it is definitely more cumbersome than going to “Torvehallerne” on a Sunday afternoon. Let us make it clear – Tianjin is not an expat hub, so going to the local supermarket will not fill your trolley with delicious fresh ingredients to cook western food. In order to survive, we have searched for the best places and have come to the conclusion that we need to source our products from multiple sources:

• Vegetable – from local market
• Bread – Japanese bakery 20 min bike ride away for white bread. For rye bread we will have to do with IKEAs bread mix
• Meat and dairies – An Australian guy has a delivery service to expats in Tianjin with imported meat from a German butcher. Fish is decent in one of the upscale Japanese supermarkets
• Other “exotic” products can be found in various speciality stores or must be imported in check-in luggage from Denmark
• For Wine we still need to find a good place with a large selection, so it is currently being smuggled in when Danielle travels abroad

It may sound cumbersome to get all the ingredients – and it is – but is has become a “sport” for us to find new place with good products, so we are getting by just fine when it comes to homemade meal.

Finding a good western style restaurant in Tianjin is on the other hand not so easy. We have so far only found a few nice places, but none of them are really good or cosy (Danielle and Carsten style). This is really where we find the downside of not living a place with many other expats (say Beijing). Whenever we need to go out and have a good restaurant experience, we will have to go to Beijing, where there are many good places.

A food week
So is it all about western food? – Of course not!

We eat a lot of Asian/Chinese food – and we love it. The Chinese kitchen is really good and is more varied than we had ever imagined – from spicy rice dishes to noodles and hot pot. We have not yet ventured into the making of Chinese dished, since there are so many nice small restaurants which make it much better than we ever could. And they are dirt cheap, so why bother.A typical week food week for us will look something like this:

• Monday
  Breakfast – Carsten style. Danielle comes to Carsten’s office at noon and we go out at our favourite Shan Xi noodle place for lunch. Dumplings for dinner is prepared during the day by our Ayi (maid) and we warm it up when we come home from work
• Tuesday & Wednesday
  Breakfast – Carsten style. Danielle eats lunch at home and Carsten at work (most likely a sandwich from the local coffee shop). Danielle cooks dinner – probably Italian pasta or a chicken/vegetables dish
• Thursday
  Breakfast – Carsten style. Danielle comes to Carsten’s office at noon and we go to the restaurant at the top of Carsten’s office building to eat Kong Pow Chicken for lunch. Our Ayi decides that it is time for a Chicken and Eggplant rice dish for dinner
• Friday
  Breakfast – Carsten style. Danielle eats lunch at home and Carsten at work (this time boiled dumplings in the canteen). We make a nice pasta for dinner accompanied by a bottle of good red wine
• Saturday
  Breakfast – Brunch style. We go to our favourite local restaurant for lunch. It serves a very nice vegetarian noodle soup. For dinner we make some big fat steaks which were delivered from our Australian guy the same day
• Sunday
  Breakfast – Brunch style. We find a new nice Chinese little restaurant on our bike trip. For dinner we decide to go out and eat at a Thai restaurant

So as you can hear, life in China is not so hard – not even on the food side. We enjoy exploring the new world of Chinese food, while still being able to make our own Danielle style food when we have time.

Looking forward to all of you coming here so we can show you the wonderful food world out here.