Café 19sieben

Posted in Germany, Tips by freitaslarii

Happy Sunday ☺️

If you don’t know yet, I live in a small city in Germany called Münster. I understand that is a city that very few people know about and it’s not on the “places to go” list of people that come to visit Germany.

However it’s beautiful, full of parks and green areas, full of young people (a lot of students) and plenty of good restaurantes/coffee places to try out.

(If you got curious to see a bit more, I made a post here a while ago in which explored a bit of the green areas we have here. Definitely worth checking out 😉 )

Saying that, yesterday I went with two friends to a new coffee place for brunch and I think it definitely deserves a post about it.

The place is called Café 19sieben. It has places to sit outside and inside. Inside has a very industrial vibe and very big as well (it used to be a mattress store before, so it has all the space a store needs).

We chose to sit outside as the sun decided to show up yesterday and we couldn’t miss the chance to not enjoy it.

The menu is full of delicious things to try on that includes a variety of toasts, beagles and cakes. My choice was a toast with avocado, goat cheese, nuts, honey and arugula. It was so delicious!

As you can see, the plate if very well served and presentation is impeccable 🧡

And to drink, I couldn’t choose anything else besides a capuccino (big) with soy milk

My order was a total of 12€ (tip included) which in my opinion is very fair for what I got.

The Café is located on Wolbercker street, which is a very busy street, so don’t expect it to be quiet. I personally loved it, as I could see people passing by and there’s always an opportunity for you to see cute dogs walking around 🐶
The staff was very nice and considering the fact that the place was full, it was very fast as well.

My rate is 5 coffees out of 5! Great environment, food, staff, location and price. You really cannot ask more than that!

So if you are visiting Münster or live here, don’t miss the opportunity to go there as well 🙂

24Apr2022

Four years in Germany

Posted in Germany, Pessoal by freitaslarii

Hello 🙂

I realized that in the beginning of this month I completed 4 years living in Germany and now looking at my blog and what to post, I think this would be a good theme to talk about.

From all the places I lived, Germany was the last one I would guess it would be the one I would live the longest. In these four years I was finally able to find what I was looking from a long time, stability.

Stability, for me, doesn’t mean that everything was good and easy. I had a bunch of up and downs that maybe if it was other times, I would probably moved out, but for some reason, I stayed. And I’m glad I did.

In these four years I first shared a flat with a German girl. After one year I fulfilled my dream of living alone, it was amazing! I always thought living alone would be great, but it was even better. It was so good to finally have my own little space, where I was the one responsible for everything. However, after two years, my boyfriend and I decided to live together, and again, it’s being better than I imagined.

Living in Germany for this long, gave me the chance to have situations/opportunities/problems of a life that I wouldn’t have as a nômade moving every year or so. And I really like having “normal” problems. It’s nice to have a base and always have a place to come back to.

Being in Germany for this long also broke my own personal record of being in one place for so long. Since I was little, still in Brazil, I would always move houses, schools and cities, I don’t recall of being more than 2/3 years in the same place. And maybe that’s why I’m so happy to have some type of situations and describe my problem as “normal” problems, even though I love traveling and knowing different cultures, deep down, I always wanted to settle in one place and experience this in the long term. So I think it hits different for me.

As I said previously, not everything was roses, I had plenty of downs, and some of them still hunts me. For instance, it’s very embarrassing for me to admit that even after four years, I can’t speak a fluent German. I tried many many times to study, go to classes, but for some reason I just couldn’t finish or take it seriously. Maybe it’s the fact that I don’t need/use German in my daily basis (giving that I speak in English for my work and all my friends are foreigns). Still, not at all a good reason to not know the language.

Overall, Germany is a very welcoming place, people can be a bit more serious and not very open to new people. However the country is very foreign friendly and I truly feel at home in here. It’s also the place in which I feel the safest, I can just walk around day and night without any concern.

I’m still not sure if Germany is the place where I want to spend the rest of my life in. The weather is very severe on winter and the lack of sun/light is something that gets you more than you can imagine (specially for a Brazilian :p). The language is also something that makes things a bit more complicated to try new things (new classes, meet new people and so on…) But for now, it’s the place in which I call it home, and I’m truly happy to call it like that ❤️

9Jun2020

Pros and cons of living in Germany

Posted in Germany, Tips by freitaslarii

germany

Hey guys!

How are you?

Today I would like to start a short series in the blog where I will tell you the pros and cons of the countries I lived so far, so if this is something you are interested, I can continue with the other countries I lived in 🙂

In case you don’t know, I was born in Brazil, and when I was 21 years old I moved to the US, spent almost 3 years there as an AuPair (I have some posts talking about those years, unfortunately they are in Portuguese, but I can talk more about my AuPair experience in the future as well), after the US I moved to Italy for one year and finally, moved to Germany and have been living here for the past 2 years.

All those countries are amazing, and I would love to share my experience and tell you what I liked and what I didn’t like.

Before we start, I would like to state that obviously this is my point of view, completely based on my experience. What is a good point for me cannot be for another person and vice versa. So let’s have this in mind when reading it 🙂

OK, let’s go! \o/

THINGS I LIKE ABOUT LIVING IN GERMANY ❤️

Security

Well, I think this is very obvious. Germany is a very safe country and my city – I risk to say, is even more due the fact is not a big city or the capital.

One of the reasons why I wanted to leave Brazil was because it’s a very dangerous place – unfortunately. So even after 2 years here, I get so surprised on how safe Germany is – of course that in bigger cities you will still need to be more careful, but nothing compared to Brazil.

The fact that I can walk alone at any time of the day and night, is priceless for me, and the main reason why I love Germany so much.

I can’t count how many times I walked back home from a friend’s house at 10/11pm or took the bus late night, or even the fact that I can go to an outside restaurant and leave my phone on the table without worrying that someone will pass by and take it.

Punctuality

Germans are very serious and compromised people – which I love. If you schedule something, make sure to be on time, because they will for sure.

And when I say on time, is exactly on time! If you think that arriving late is bad, keep in mind that arriving earlier isn’t good either.

Living is Germany made me a more punctual person and less tolerant with other people’s tardiness! lol

However, for every rule there’s an exception… In this case the trains are the exception, they are ALWAYS late! It’s very hard to buy train tickets where you need to change trains when in 90% of the time the train will be delayed. The delays can vary from 5/10 min to even 35min – 1 hour. – this is very frustrating and happens quite often in here.

Everything works

As I mention on the previous topic, Germans are very serious and compromised people.
Rules are 100% followed, for everything, they won’t even cross the street in a red light with no cars passing by, in the middle of the night. – silly example, but that’s how serious they take the rules here.

Germany is a very well structured country, everything works perfectly, and everything you need you will have a solution – or an insurance for it! lol

English is spoken more than expected

German is not easy, trust me! But it’s amazing how you will always find someone who speaks in English, and even when they claim their English is not good, it’s always amazing and you can communicate perfectly.

In bigger cities is even better, you can communicate and find informations in English easily.

I’m planning on writing a post telling about how to live in Germany without speaking German, so I will save some personal experiences for this post! lol

The country is SO beautiful

Well, here I am stating the obvious again! Germany is beautiful, clean and full of churches! lol

Traveling around Germany is extremely satisfying, every city you go, you will find history, beautiful views, tons of churches and castles! There are so many castles around Germany and they are all so beautiful! I had the opportunity to go in some of them –Neuschwanstein Castle for instance is the most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life.

You will not be disappointed when traveling around Germany 🙂

– wow Lari, Germany is a fairy tail then, right? NO! lol it’s 95% perfect, but there are the cons, here they are.

THINGS I DON’T LIKE ABOUT LIVING IN GERMANY 😪

The language

German is so freaking hard! Even tho it’s easy to find people who speaks in English, is still quite challenge to live in a country where you don’t speak the main language.

The grammar rules are very complicated and for most cases, they don’t exist! lol I used to live with a German girl and whenever I would ask her about a rule or why they would say something in a certain way, she would say “I don’t know, I just know that this is the correct way” lol

The preposition of words is always a fun game to play, you never know when is der, die or das, and guess what, there’s no rule for that lol – well there are some rules, but they are not applicable in all of the cases.

Don’t think you can learn German by yourself, language apps helps a lot, but if you really wanna learn German, you will have to go to school and have some proper classes.

Weather

Being born and raised in a tropical country, I grew up not liking the heat (and I don’t blame myself, living in a country where the temperature is around 30 Celsius for the majority of the year, and humid is not always nice ok?) – so I was the person who would love winter (poor me)

I experienced a proper winter the first time when I was living in Italy and omg, it’s no fun.

Since I moved to Germany, the weather here isn’t the best. We have a lot of cloudy and rainy days and winter can be pretty bad too.

I’m writing this post in June and it’s 12 Celsius outside – not a very promising summer I would say.

The temperature itself is not the worst in my opinion, the houses here are very well prepared for winter and you can cover yourself with plenty of jackets when leaving the house. The issue in my opinion is the lack of sun during winter and autumn – and the fact the is dark around 4/5pm as well, it really gets me

In another hand I love when it’s summer and we have light until 10:30pm. \o/

Meeting new people

I am from South America, we scream, we hug, we touch –a lot. So it’s very easy for us to make friends or even just have a casual chat in the supermarket and never see the person again.

In here, I found it a bit difficult to have any of that, Germans are very respectful and mind their own business – which is good too! But it does make it a bit harder to create a deeper bond with them.

I wish they were more open to meet new people because they are amazing, but I find it very hard to approach them.

—

Well, that’s it! I love living in Germany and everything that comes along with it! Do you like this type of post? Would you be interested in knowing about pros and cons about the US, Italy or Brazil? Please let me know 🙂

bye bye!

3Jun2020

Weekend in Hamburg

Posted in Germany, Tips, Trips by freitaslarii

Hey guys!

I hope you are all good 🙂

Today I wanna share with you about my short trip to Hamburg I made last weekend.

I mentioned that me and my boyfriend were planning to go to Hamburg. The idea was to go on the first weekend of June, but we got so excited with the idea that we decided to anticipate the trip, so we went last Saturday. \o/

Since Hamburg is only 2 hours away from Münster, we decided to make it a short trip, we left on Saturday at 7am and came back on Sunday at 4pm.

Hotel

I booked our hotel on booking.com and I found the IBIS Budget hotel which is very well located, close to the train station and to the center as well, we did everything walking, so it was very convenient to us.

The price for one night was good as well, we paid 77 euros for one night (No breakfast included, you can pay 7.50 and have breakfast there, but we didn’t think it was necessary for us).

The check in is at 2pm, but since we arrived at 10am in Hamburg, we decided to go to the hotel to see if we could leave our bags in there in a locker or something. The staff were so nice that they allowed us to check in earlier – probably because the hotel wasn’t full and our room was ready, but still, very nice, 5 points to IBIS! 😂

Another nice thing to mention is that when I made the reservation, I sent them a message asking for a room in the top floor and they attended my request, which I also found very thoughtful of them 🙂

The room itself is very small – as you can see in the picture, but very clean and comfortable, perfect for a one night stay and for couples. I definitely recommend IBIS Budget if you go to Hamburg!

Our small, yet comfy bedroom

The City + Restaurants and Bars

For this trip, we didn’t search much on what to do there. I saw one picture on instagram – the Speicherstadt, and that was basically what motivated us to go there. We are also not big fans of museums or exhibitions, we like to walk (a lot!) and go where catch our eyes, and that’s exactly what we did.

The place that made me want to go to Hamburg

We started our walk by going to Speicherstadt which is the largest warehouse district in the world – where the buildings stand on timber-pile foundations, oak logs, in this particular case.

The architecture is unbelievable and so beautiful, we made sure to take our time in there to check everything and of course, take a lot of pictures!

There are some museums located in this area as well, but as I said, it was not our goal to visit museums this time, but you can check them here

After that, we started walking to the center and it was very crazy because during our walk, we didn’t see a single soul in the streets, we don’t know if it was because of the virus or any other particular reason. But as soon as we got into the center, we found out where everyone was! lol

The center of Hamburg is very nice, full of stores (as it should be) and with 3 or so churches around it as well. They were very pretty on the outside, but pretty basic on the inside, since it’s free, it’s still worth to check 🙂

It’s worth to mention that we were impressed by the architecture of the city, every building was so beautiful and they all matched each other, it’s crazy.

After walking for hours, we decided we deserved some drinks and to eat something – not much since we wanted to save ourselves for a proper and nice dinner #travelingionabudget lol

We went to Sausalitos which is a Mexican chain restaurant in Germany, and we had some drinks and fries. As usual, we sat next to an amazing building and made sure to take some pictures.

We decided to go back to the hotel, rest a bit and prepare ourselves to go out again at night for dinner and drinks.

For dinner our main plan was to go to ALEX restaurant, it has a view to the Alster Fountains – a very big lake that is surrounded by restaurants. We called to make reservations but they were completely full, however we decided to go there anyway and try our luck.

When we got there, there was a huge line just to put your name on the waiting list, so we gave up at the same second! We decided to walk around the place and we found a boat restaurant called Alsterlagune

The restaurant was not very full and the view was amazing. They serve seafood, meat and pasta. We chose to order a steak and omg! we were not disappointed! The food was very well served and the meat was delicious! Being a Brazilian and my boyfriend Argentinian, we are very picky when it comes to good meat, we have been struggling to find a good steak for a reasonable price for a while now, so we were not expecting much from this place, but we were very surprised on how good this steak was!

The price was very ok as well, with drinks plus our plates, we paid around 30 euros each. Totally worth it and we were full forever lol

After that, we decided to have a drink at Reeperbahn – which is a street and entertainment district in Hamburg’s. Is one of the two centers of Hamburg’s nightlife and also the city’s major red-light district.

on our way to Reeperbahn

It was a 40 min walk from the lake until there, but we were so full that the walk helped us to get back on track! The night was very agitated and we went to Spielbudenplatz – which is a place with many bars and street food in an open area, to have drinks.

After that, we were destroyed and came back to the hotel.

On the next day we only had a few hours before our train to depart. We did the check-out in the hotel and decided to go check the Elbphilharmonie concert hall building, which is so cool! The building is one of the largest and acoustically most advanced concert halls in the world.

After that we decided we needed to have a hamburger in Hamburg, just because! lol I googled some places and found Otto’s burger. We made our way there and we were not disappointed!

I ordered one of their special burgers of the day, which was a burger with gorgonzola cheese, aioli sauce and caramelized onions (it was heaven!) and Juan ordered the Chuck Norris burger.

Chuck Norris burger

Gorgonzola burger

This was by far one of the best burgers I ever had! 10/10! The place was also vey cute and the service was great as well. In total we spent 40 euros with the burgers and drinks.

After that we made our way to the train station and came back home!

And that was our trip to Hamburg! Very short but perfect for the weekend, I loved it and recommend to everyone 🙂 The architecture was something I wasn’t expecting to be so amazing and I was very happy with the positive surprise.

I hope you liked it and I would also like to mention that all these amazing pictures were taken by Juan, so if you like, please make sure to follow him on instagram for more great pictures 🙂

We talk soon!

28May2020

Series to Watch on Netflix

Posted in Uncategorized by freitaslarii

Hey guys!

I hope you are all great 🙂

Today I wanna share with you guys some series I’ve watched on Netflix and really liked. I love suspense/thriller series, so this post will be based on these type of genre.

I also love documentaries, but I decided to make a separate post for that, so it doesn’t get mixed.

Another thing you should know is that I don’t have the patience for long series or series that ends without an explanation, demanding a second season. If the show is from Netflix is even worst, because you will usually finish watching the show in one week (or less lol), and the second season usually comes up after 2 years. By then, I will have forgotten everything about the story and the chances of me watching it are zero.

So the series below are short, with a proper end and perfect to binge-watch on the weekend!

Quicksand

Quicksand is a Swedish show (btw, I’m loving that Netflix is producing more series from different countries) based on a book by the same name.

“In the aftermatch of a school shooting, 18 year-old Maja Norberg is taken into police custody and told she’s being charged with murder”

It’s a very short show with only 6 episodes of 40-50min each. It really gets your attention and makes you want to know what will happen with Maja. Although the show is centered in teenagers, it has the right amount of suspense that doesn’t let it be too teen or even too silly to watch.

Unbelievable

Unbelievable is a US show based on true events about a series of rapes in Washington State and Colorado.

“Unbelievable follows on Marie, a teenager who was charged with lying about having been raped, and the two detectives who followed a twisting path to arrive at the truth.”

The show has 8 episodes of 40-50min each. It’s very evolving, the fact that is based on true events, makes everything more interesting, and revolting as well. The series also shows a bit of Marie’s past to make you understand why people do not believe in her.

The Stranger

The stranger is a British show and very new – it was released in Jan/2020.

“Adam Price is a happily married father of two whose life is turned upside-down after a stranger tells him a secret about his wife. The revelation catapults him into a world of danger.”

Is the type of show that I was sure that it would need a second season to unfold everything. For my happy surprise, the main questions are answered in the 8 episodes, yet leaving some cues for a second season, if ends up happening.

The Sinner

The sinner is quite famous and should definitely be in this list! Starring Jessica Biel, who is also one of the producers of the show, the drama starts when Cora, a young mother, stabs a man to death with no apparent motive and without later being able to remember committing the crime.

It’s very intriguing and it makes you wanna watch one episode after the other! The sinner has 2 seasons, but one season is not related to the other one, since it tells two different stories having only the detective as a permanent character.

The second season is also very good and worth to be watched 🙂

That’s it for now! I think that those series are quite good and makes you do not leave your couch until you finish!

I hope you liked and if you watch any of those series, please let me know, I would love to hear your thoughts!

Bye bye 😘

THINGS I LIKE ABOUT LIVING IN GERMANY ❤️