May the 4th be with you!! Best month of all, because it’s my month! hahaha

It’s funny how life can change so much in such a short period. You plan, and plan, and plan, but suddenly without any previous notice, destiny comes and changes everything…Thank God this time was for better! Last time I wrote a post here, we were still in sunny Brazil, trying to deal with 33 degrees Celsius in the beginning of Autumn! haha Just ten days after we had to rush through our things and pack our belongings to come back to this beautiful city that is Berlin!

Truth is that after spending the year of 2015 here as language students, we fell in love with Berlin and wanted to stay and build a life here. But as Brazilians, is not that easy to stay here in Germany after your language student visa expires, because you can’t change the status to any other type of visa. In January we went back to Brazil, but still with a little hope inside of us, and tried doing everything that was possible to come back. The dream became a little more closer after Rafael received a job offer (thank you, God!). He did all the procedures to get a work visa through the German Consulate in São Paulo (of course we struggled a little with all the paperwork, it’s never easy, but totally worth it), and we thought that it would take as least three months the whole process. But luckily (thanks again, God!), it went faster than we expected, and out of the blue, we were coming back! We still have an appointment to take our residence permit, and we are running around to fill out all the paperwork, but I believe if it’s meant to be, everything will go fine.

Since the subject here is Germany, I’m going to take this chance to share some pictures of the Reichstag building. Back in December we finally registered ourselves to visit the dome. This building has been through a lot, it was set on fire in 1933 and severely damaged after world war II. The architecture is beautiful, and from above, you have a really nice view of the Tiergarten and the city, totally worth the visit!

The glass dome

Our appointment was really early, like 7:45 am, the sun was still rising on the horizon.

You go up the dome, using the spiral ramp, it doesn’t look so high, but I gotta say that I got a little frightened, because of my fear of heights, but I made it to the top…yay!!

You can see the parliament below through this big round window, and this large sun shield right above it, tracks the movement of the sun electronically and blocks direct sunlight to the room.

The top!

“The Population”

“The German people”

If you are coming to visit Berlin, check out this website for more information about the Reichstag: http://www.bundestag.de/htdocs_e/visits/kuppel/kupp/245686

xx