Category: Allgemein

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Allgemein

Settling Into Our New Home

Photo by Getter Leipalu

Dear friends,

It’s been two years since our last blog post, and we’re excited to update you on our latest adventures. We’ve moved to a new home within Germany, and we’re thrilled to show you more about this beautiful country and the region we now call home.

We’ve been busy renovating our house, and it’s been quite the project. It’s amazing how much work goes into making a house feel like a home, but we’re enjoying the process and can’t wait to share the finished product with you.

As for our furry friend, Saarland, we can hardly believe how quickly he’s grown up. From a playful kitten to a crazy teenager, he’s been a joy to have around and always keeps us on our toes.

Now let’s talk about Germany. It’s a country with a rich history and diverse culture, and we’re excited to explore more of what it has to offer. From the city of Berlin to the stunning countryside of the Rhine Valley, there’s so much to see and experience.

But where did we end up now? We’ve moved to a new home in the beautiful region of OWL, located in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and we can’t wait to share all that this area has to offer.

One of our favorite things about OWL is its picturesque countryside, dotted with charming towns and villages. There are also several historic landmarks to explore, from ancient castles to modern museums showcasing the region’s rich cultural heritage.

But perhaps the best part about OWL is its outdoor recreation opportunities. There are countless hiking and biking trails to discover, and the region is home to several stunning parks and natural reserves. From the rolling hills of the Teutonic Forest to the flowing river Weser, there’s something for everyone to enjoy.

Of course, we’ll also be sharing more about the local cuisine, which features delicious specialties like Pumpernickel bread, Pickert, and Rübenkraut (a sweet syrup made from sugar beets). We’re excited to try out new recipes and share our favorites with you.

So stay tuned as we continue to explore and discover all that OWL has to offer, with our furry friend Saarland by our side.

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Allgemein

Moving! The German way… And paperwork 😂

So we recently moved houses, from our previous flat to our country side home to work on it full time (or full-ish, cause actual work), and… is so tiring!!

We had some much stuff and feels so weird

Personally is the first time I move homes in the same country without my parents. Let’s not count moving countries, that was more complicated 😅

Besides the space, the vans or cars you might need, you have to call _everyone_ to tell them you moved out: Your bank, your telephone operator, the post service, everyone. And you have to go register in your new city to get the address in your ID changed to the latest. If you happen to have a car you have to do the same as with your ID and change your plates to indicate the area you live in (for example if you were living in Berlin your Plate started with B, if you move to Hamburg it will change to HH)

And if you, like me, have an… i don’t know the translation for it, but like a temporary residence card then you have to go to the Ausländerbehörde to change the address on said card.
Something I have learned in Germany is that my dream is to work in that office, they open like 3 days a week and only take calls for like 2h a week, no matter where you are (we hoped the new office of our new city would be better but noooope, just the same).

There’s so much paperwork implied, and more if you were renting, cause they have to check the status of your previous flat to decide if you get your deposit back, of you have to renovate the flat by yourself or if you’re good to go. Thankfully the renters we had were great and fair, so we didn’t had to do much there 🙂

Also, a tip: Transporters are cheaper during work days than on weekends. I swear Germans have so many holidays a year cause they need them to deal with bureaucracy a lot 😅😂

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Allgemein

Pets in Germany

As some of you may know, we just (finally) adopted a cat ♥️
I was raised in a house with cats literally since the day I came home with my mom from the hospital after being born, so when I moved to Germany to a new house, new environment, food, language and people I really felt the emptiness of not having a cat. My cats stayed in Costa Rica as good tropical cats that I won’t bring into a place with winter, besides we were living on a second floor so no cat friendly.

Now we live on a ground floor and the cat project materialized thanks to a friend of Micha’s brother, who’s parents had some spare kittens to give away ♥️

we present you: Saarland 🥰

So we visited them first to check Micha’s allergies and since no allergies were given we adopted Saarland 🥰
For those of you out of Germany, this country is divided in 16 federal states and the smallest is named Saarland. People in the news use it as reference of size when there are natural disasters (e.g a forest fores the size of Saarland) so we decided to name the cat like this to measure our stuff in cat measurements 😂.

The size of Saarland keeps changing, but hang in there 😂

So come to the point: How to adopt a pet in Germany?
Well… Depends of the pets you want. In the case of cats you can pick one from a shelter (Tierheim, there is at least one in every midsized town), or the cat magically chose you or, like us, you meet someone who’s cat was getting accidental kitties, then you just get it 🙂
After that comes the visits to the Tierarzt/veterinarian to get them the basic vaccinations (they even get a vaccination card ♥️) and you can ask for a chip. The first round of vaccines + the chip was like 60€, so not the cheapest thing in the world but waaaay cheaper than we expected.
You of course need to get food, sand (that traps pee and masks poo smells, top), a transporter and a bed. And a Mousie, all cats i know love them 😂
If you want a dog on the other side, prepare to pay taxes, as there’s a dog tax in Germany no matter your dog’s size 😔

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Allgemein

Traveling in the middle of a pandemic

Yep. We did it.

Life happens, or not, and sometimes we have to take big decisions. This time is my mother who is not doing really well so we decided to visit her now that we had the chance and to not regret it later. We might talk about it in a separate post, is just not the moment right now.
So, we traveled, and we had COVID-19 some months ago so we felt sliiiightly safer. Here is more or less the whole experience (for a travel between December 31 and January 11.

Some might miss this view but all this involves probably the most sad and stressful time of my life

We traveled Germany-Netherlands-Costa Rica and the other way around. Costa Rica was not asking for any requirements at the moment so we only needed to fill up the ones for the Netherlands; a PCR test done no longer than 72h before the flight and a paper for the ministry of health.

We got the flights with such a short notice that we had to take one with a 14h stop in the Netherlands.

Arriving to Costa Rica was just easy going, the normal procedure. We got to see my parents, my aunt and uncle my brothers and my cats. And of course also we are some real nice costarican food.

I kinda missed this landscape… and of course the sunshine, it was between 18 and 27 degrees.

Then for coming back to Germany was more complicated, we needed a PCR test and the letter for the Netherlands, which we got, but the German rules were not so clear. A test must be made either 48h before you arrive or immediately. I never made the math for our existing Netherlands test and when we arrived to Germany everything was empty. Confusing. Oh, you also have to register in a German website, basically giving your data, contact information and address, but that’s it. I guess it must be harder if you arrived directly to Germany from Costa Rica without stops. Anyways, for our region you can make 5 days quarantine before you go and get another PCR test. If this is negative you can cut the quarantine there. If you don’t want to do it you just stay in quarantine for 10 days.

We got a pretty snowy view on our quarantine and temperatures between -2 and 3 degrees. We haven seen it all this winter

The travel itself was nice, KLM is one of the best airlines ever and my respects go fully to the poor pilot who brought us from Costa Rica to The Netherlands, it was literally a flight in turbulence and we made it alive. I really hate to travel in winter now but next time I need to do it it will definitely be with this airline again. And no, they’re sadly not sponsoring us haha.

Is not so hard to travel, but is uncomfortable and really expensive with so many tests in between, don’t do it unless you have a reason like ours, though we hope you don’t. Stay healthy and love each day of life as if it was the last, really.

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Allgemein

Christmas Markets

This is definitely the most German thing to do in winter, at least in normal winters

I have seen proper christmas markets only 2 years, in 2018 in my first winter in Germany and last year. Unfortunately in 2020 due to the pandemic is not the same, yet some cities like Lüneburg are making a nice effort to give the people something similar

2020

Christmas markets are a 100% German thing, yet apparently you can also find them spread a bit around the world. Anyways, in Germany itself there are some Christmas markets that are more famous than the others. Here in the north the one in Lüneburg is known for being cute and in a historical pretty town. There are 2 in Hamburg, one typical and one in St Pauli. This one is way more modern and you can get not only the classical eggnog and Glühwein but other random things. There are also parties around it and techno music going on. I think the most famous Christmas markets might be in Nürnberg and Aachen, which unfortunately I haven’t had the chance to see yet ( we planned to do a Christmas market tour in 2020 but… you know) but they’re the biggest of the country.

I think this markets being in the hardest part and darkest time of the year make the winter more bearable. All those lights, sweet smell of caramelized nuts, beautiful colors and cozy beverages make up for a magical scenario that can make you feel happy quite fast, this year there was even snow so I can only imagine how beautiful it would have been magical. Let’s hope for a 2021/2022 where all this can happen and then we can make our Christmas market tour and show you more about them 🙂

St. Pauli is, I think, an exception to what you can usually find

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Allgemein

Lüneburger Heide!

Well as the name says it, it is _in the region of Lüneburg_ but a bit far from Lüneburg itself. Like 1h in a car. The best moment to visit the Lüneburger Heide is definitely by the end of summer (or mid summer also) so you can see all the Heide plants in full bloom.

They have a pink tone, almost purple like lavender but brighter and they don’t smell (or if they do we could not feel it in that moment) but they do attract bees! This makes us really happy, as bees are usually in trouble of getting enough food, specially when time starts getting colder, and thankfully the Heide is a really cold-resistant plant.

Here you can see someone’s bees boxes, they leave them there so they can polinize and get the most out of the Heide.

Around 9000 Moorland sheeps get in the Heide annually to keep the birch trees and pines at bay, they also keep the Heide (or heather) at a lenght ideal for it to grow new sprouts and flower more. So long story short, the sheeps make community service in the Lüneburger Heide keeping the species of plants there at their best 🙂

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Allgemein

Externsteine

This might be our most hyped place. The most hyped podcast too! And with all the reason cause this place is GORGEOUS.

We think there should be more people visiting here, it’s surprising how you talk about it with other germans and they don’t know about it or they just don’t where is it. So we bring it here for everyone!

It is located in Horn, Nordrhein-westfallen. In the north-east of this region, really close to Lower Saxony in the Teutoburg forest. You can also reach easy from Detmold.
This huge rocks reach the 15m of height and are super old, so much that there is said that this place was sacred for the Saxons and even had in the surrounding the Irminsul (the tree of life) which was eventually destroyed by Carlo Magno.

Another interesting thing is that you are allowed to go up this rocks through a set of stairs, and in one of the top of this rocks there is a hole, which aligns with the sun on the summer solstice. It has been speculated that it can be (or could have been) of astronomical importance in the same sense as Stonehenge for example.

So now you know, German cities are gorgeous, but the country side has jewels worth visit!

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Allgemein

Advent Calendar for party people

One day we saw a really funny set of stickers for advent calendars and thought: How would it look on the top of 24 bottles of beer? Cause apparently that’s a normal amount for beer boxes.
… then we realized it actually is a good idea! Unfortunately we were not at home when we decided this so the only things available were an iPad and a black and white printer.

We, of course took our chance.

After some drafting and a fast visit to a supermarket late at night we made it and we want to share it with you, after all tomorrow starts the official count and the time to open the advent calendars (and get tipsy)

Here you can find the printable, but behold cause you will have to cut 24 circles with scissors:

Beer-NumbersDownload
This is how it should look like 😉

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Allgemein

Aachen!

Or the last stop in our holidays before i got my first German job :D.
We visited Aachen after the Schwarzwald trip, to finally visit a friend who lives there and feel again like we could cross the border to the Netherlands and Belgium anythime!… if there was no corona and there was more time.

Here we were for only 2 days but still, Aachen is great. Driving in Aachen not so… is very confusing. We were mostly in the old town, cause we have been told a lot that Aachens cathedral is the prettiest of Germany

Aachen’s cathedral is MASSIVE

I still like Freiburgs cathedral the most but Aachen’s is HUGE. Like, i had to step reaaaally far away for the picture above. We got scolded by Micha’s mom cause we were not inside and apparently we were missing it BIG TIME, so if you also go to Aachen -to visit Eliah as we did- go inside the cathedral!

Ánd as the foodies we are we got Aachen’s most popular thing: Printen!

This are Printen.

They look like cookies, in the shape and size of cookies. But is more like bread. Have you seen this popular heart-shaped ginger bread cookies with cheese messages in the german christmas markets? well, those are also printen! but this ones we got can be found at any time of the year in lots of combinations! white, milk or dark chocolate, with nuts, with fruits… big or tiny, there is for everyone a printen. I love printen ♥

There is probably a lot more that we could not see, so we will be probably visiting again in the future. People say that the christmas market of Aachen is awesome so we will keep you updated 🙂

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Allgemein

The apple-picking experience

… in Nordrhein-Westphalia, cause we have closer the Altes Land in Hamburg but better acces to the area surrounding Detmold, as you might have seen already.

FULL

So Micha’s grandpa had 5 apple trees, and this year was amazing for apple picking, they were FULL of apples. Over production… and i always had wanted to pic apples, as for me fuits are better when taken directly from the trees, and i’m not used to apple trees at all so this experience had it all. The hype was palpable. We were 3 hours in the morning and 2 after lunch for a total of around 142kg of apples!

The tastiest apples of the WORLD
142kg you see

It was a massive amount of apples! And what do you do with so many apples, would you ask?… well… see it yourselves!

87 bottles of apple juice!
Apple pie!
A HUGE amount of Apple mouse!… which we use partially for our home made nut bars 😀
And last, but not least, eating them as this.

I repeat this a lot, and is that i used to hate apples. This foamy-barely sweet huge nonse fruit for christmas in my country. No thanks. But then i tasted this ones… is like having branches full of sweet beautiful dessert to eat as you please. HEAVEN. And we made Micha’s grandpa really happy so was a really nice day 🙂 and week… and everything cause who knows when are we gonna run short of apples. I hope never 😀