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How to Rent in Luxembourg as an Expat: The Mistakes That Cost You the Apartment. 140_03 She landed in Luxembourg on the first of May. Every shop was closed for the holiday. Her parents left the next morning, and she stood there with one suitcase, in a country she had barely heard of. Aukse Poehle came from Lithuania fifteen years ago as a corporate lawyer. She moved from room to room, cried through sleepless nights, and learned French by reading L'essentiel on the bus every morning. Today she helps newcomers find a safe place to land, and the seed she is planting is trust, for people arriving in a country where nobody yet knows their name. In this episode: Before you move, come to Luxembourg for one week, test your commute, and have your dossier ready in French. A salary of 4,000 euros does not get you a flat. Landlords ask for three times the rent, and your dossier can be one of twenty perfect ones. An apartment listed as available right now should make you ask why. Good flats are listed two to three months ahead. A phone call to the owner can win a flat that an email never would. Never transfer money before both signatures are on the rental contract, and know that the agency fee in Luxembourg is split 50 50 between tenant and owner by law. Chapters 00:00 Landing in Luxembourg 02:21 Alone on the first of May 04:00 Learning French on the bus 05:02 Living out of rented rooms 07:03 Availability, affordability and 20 dossiers 10:23 The three times rent rule 11:14 Do your homework before you arrive 12:53 Why you should call the owner 15:20 The red flag in "available now" 18:32 What to look for in the flat itself 22:06 Contracts, agency fees and your rights 24:50 Never pay before both signatures 28:46 Trust and working together This podcast is part of Seeds for a Better World, the association I founded here in Luxembourg. Every conversation supports education for children in rural Colombia. If this episode gives you something today, you can give something back. Support the association: https://www.seedsforabetterworld.com/donate Connect with the guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aukse-poehle-at-bed-and-roof-8b845024/ And share with us: What seed are you planting? Hosted by María Lucia Romero-Grother

You walk into the forest tired and you walk out lighter, and you never really knew why. In this episode, recorded in the forest in Luxembourg, psychologist Isabel Van De Voorde explains what happens in your brain and your body when you slow down among the trees. Isabel spent years in HR. Then came exhaustion, sick leave, and long walks in the forest where she felt on her own without feeling alone. As a psychologist, she wanted to know why. Today she is planting a seed of wellbeing, showing people how time in nature calms the stress system and changes the way we treat ourselves, each other and the living world. Why 20 minutes in nature is enough to calm your stress system, and why two hours a week is a realistic goal for a busy life.What happens in the brain when you look at ferns and trees instead of screens and traffic, and how natural fractal shapes let your attention rest.How the sound of birds lowers fear in the brain, why hospitals use it with children in cancer treatment, and why the effect is stronger in women.Why a forest walk with your phone on vibration gives your brain a very different dopamine response than a walk without it. The one thing you can do this week: before you walk into work or pick up your kids, stay a few minutes in the car without your phone, open the window, watch the clouds, and listen to the birds. Connect with Isabel here: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isabel-van-de-voorde-8180432/?isSelfProfile=false Website: https://naturalminds.lu/ This podcast is part of Seeds for a Better World, the association I founded here in Luxembourg. What this work brings in goes to education for children in rural Colombia. If this conversation gave you something today, you can give something back here: https://www.seedsforabetterworld.com/donate Plant it. Grow it. Spread it.

Sara Cantelar left a career, a family and friends she had known since school. She arrived in Luxembourg with a baby and nobody to call in an emergency. This is the story of how a foreign city slowly became home. In this episode she talks about the guilt of leaving her parents behind, the day she stopped trying to be everything at once, and the small habits that told her she finally belonged. Walking without Google Maps. Her child asking for the same park. A barista who already knows her coffee. The seed Sara is planting is belonging. She is building the thing she needed and could not find when she arrived. The one thing you can do this week: 1. raise your hand, 2. ask one person for help, and 3. say yes to one place where people gather. We are also taking the podcast live in Luxembourg on 6 October 2026. Details on the website. This podcast is part of Seeds for a Better World, the association I founded here in Luxembourg. I do not get paid for this. What I earn from this work goes to education for children in rural Colombia. If the conversation gives you something today, you can give something back. The link is below. seedsforabetterworld.com Connect with Sara here: https://senseliving.app/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-cantelar/

This is the last episode of the Brilliantly Branded Podcast and the first day of Seeds for a Better World. After 136 episodes over three years, María Lucia Romero sits on the other side of the microphone while Philip Grother asks the questions. She talks about the live podcast event in Luxembourg where she decided not to sell a single ticket, the drive up into rural Colombia, and what she saw on the faces of 50 families waiting outside a school for something they had been told was coming but had no reason to believe in yet. What she is planting is a sense of belonging in Luxembourg, and education for children in rural Colombia. The two are the same project. In this episode: Why she gave away the tickets to her own live podcast event and asked for a voluntary donation instead, and what that changed about the room on the night. How 50 school kits and uniforms delivered in Colombia in 2025 became a target of 250 this year, then 500, with the aim of reaching more than 10,000 children in rural Colombia over the coming years. What happened when her contract in Luxembourg ended, nobody called back, and she built her own company because there was no other door left to open. This is the experience the association is built on. The takeaway from this episode: offer the help before anyone asks you for it. Sarah Cantelar sent one message offering support, and she is now organising the October event alongside María. Why 136 episodes about personal branding and women empowerment turned into an association, an ASBL registered in Luxembourg, with a podcast as its voice rather than the other way around. The live event, Building a Life in Luxembourg, takes place on 6 October 2026. Details and registration: https://www.seedsforabetterworld.com/events This podcast is part of Seeds for a Better World, the association I founded here in Luxembourg. I do not get paid for this. What I earn from this work goes to education for children in rural Colombia. If the conversation gives you something today, you can give something back. The link is below. Donate: https://www.seedsforabetterworld.com/donate

In this episode you will learn something that most of us have felt but never been able to explain. Why some conversations drain you before they even start. Why you can be doing everything right and still feel like you are running on empty. And why the answer has nothing to do with working harder or managing your time better. Dr. Cornelia Kawann is an electrical engineer who built a method around something science has been studying for decades but nobody is teaching in the context of leadership and business. She calls it Business Energetics, and it starts with one idea: we are walking electromagnetic fields, and the beliefs we carry are frequencies stored in the body. In this conversation we cover: How our electromagnetic field works and why the heart is five times stronger than the brain.What a limiting belief actually is at a frequency level, and why talking about it is not always the fastest way to remove it.How to identify when your energy is off, in the short term and over years.What you can do with the energy you cannot control, other people, difficult environments, situations you did not choose. And then something happens live. Dr. Cornelia works on one of María Lucia's limiting beliefs, in real time, in front of the audience. No details. No analysis. Just the process, and what shifted after. If you have been feeling something you cannot name, this episode gives it a name. Guest: Dr. Cornelia Kawann, electrical engineer and founder of the Business Energetics Method.Find her at: https://www.corneliakawann.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cornelia-energy-on/Her book: Change Your Energy, Change Your Life. https://amzn.to/3HgUdEL

What happens inside you when you build something from nothing, and it slowly starts to feel like it has a heartbeat of its own. Claudia Glass spent over twenty years as a high school English teacher. One day, driving home after class, a voice said her name. It said: it is now time. She did not have a business background. She did not know what a textile engineer was. She had never built a product in her life. She wrote an email to a Swiss Federal Materials Science Laboratory anyway. Three years later, she launched SwiJin, a high-performance sportswear brand built for women, by a woman, from a need she lived herself. In this episode we talk about what building something from nothing actually does to you. The brain science behind why founders love their startups the way a parent loves a newborn. The nos, the failures, the pressure, and the one reason she kept going. What she learned about women's bodies that most women were never told. And the word she would plant as a seed for a better world. If you are building something, questioning something, or standing in front of a decision you have not made yet, this conversation is for you. Guest: Claudia Glass, founder of SwiJinLearn more: https://swijin.com/Host: María Lucia Romero, Brilliantly Branded Podcast

Moving to a new country looks simple on paper. A job, a flat, a fresh start. Then you arrive, and the real life begins. In this episode, María Lucia talks with Denis Niedringhaus, who has spent eight years supporting expats and their families through relocation and cultural integration in Luxembourg. María knows this from the inside. She left the corporate world to build her own business here, and she remembers what it takes to go from arriving to belonging. What you will learn: Why the promise of Luxembourg and the reality of the first months are often two different thingsHow to approach the housing crisis, and the best time of year to look for an apartmentWhat the four languages of Luxembourg mean for your daily life and your sense of belongingHow expat spouses can build a network and feel at home, even when they arrive aloneWhat it takes to start a business and find clients in a small, formal, relationship-driven marketWhy asking for help is the single most useful thing you can do when you landThis is a conversation for anyone moving to Luxembourg, living here already, or supporting someone who is. Honest, practical, and full of the kind of advice you only get from people who have lived it. Guest: Dennis Niedrinhaus, relocation and intercultural specialist, Luxembourg. Connect with him on Linkedin. https://www.linkedin.com/in/denis-niedringhaus/

You have the stable career. The title, the salary, the clear path. And still, something keeps pulling at you. A small voice that says this is not it anymore. In this episode, Tine Van Camp shares how that pull turned into a decision. She spent seven years in the Big Four, became a mother twice, lived through a birth that scared her more than anything in her life, and then lost the job she had given everything to. Instead of rushing into the next role, she used those six months to build the thing she had wanted for years: Bonbeur, a rainwear brand made for women who want to feel good even when the weather is against them. This is a conversation about the moment you stop waiting for permission. About what it really takes to start something with two small kids at home. About confidence breaking and slowly coming back. And about turning a personal frustration into a product the world actually needs. What you will hear: How a traumatic birth changed the way Tine saw her career and her time  What it really feels like to be slowly pushed out of a job after years of being the strong profile  How she built discipline and structure from scratch as a new entrepreneur and mother  Why she made Bonbeur for women specifically, and where the name came from  The one word she would plant as a Seed for a Better World Guest: Tine Van Camp, founder of Bonbeur, rainwear for women.  Host: María Lucia Romero.

A story that become a brand. At 33, Irene Del Olmo went in for a routine checkup. She came out with two pieces of news that changed everything. A rare form of breast cancer. And the confirmation that becoming a mother would not be possible. What she did next is what this episode is about. In this conversation, Irene shares how she rebuilt her health from the inside out, spending years as her own testing ground, reading research, fine-tuning supplements, and refusing to accept impossible as a final answer. She tried fertility treatments across three countries. Nothing worked. Then, naturally, against every medical prediction, she fell pregnant. She miscarried. And three months later, fell pregnant again. Her daughter Theodora, a name that means gift from God, is now here. And so is Birtz Nutrition, the supplement brand Irene built from everything she learned. In this episode: What it feels like to lose your identity after eight months of chemotherapyHow Irene used nutrition and supplementation to restore what the treatment tookThe moment a doctor suggested she consider getting a dog insteadWhy she went back to university to silence the imposter syndromeWhat grit looks like when every expert has already told you noIrene is a former lawyer, founder of Birtz Nutrition, and a woman who built something real from the hardest chapter of her life. Find Irene and Birtz Nutrition at www.birtznutrition.com

What if your shoes could be a vote for a different world? In this episode, María Lucia speaks with Stefan Woben, co-founder of NOOCH, a 100% plant-based footwear brand built around one question: What if Mother Earth was our CEO? Stefan and his co-founder Lotte have spent 13 years rethinking not just what a shoe is made of, but how a brand is financed, how products are ordered, how customers are kept close, and how honesty becomes the business model. You will hear how a visit to an eco-camp in Spain started everything. How anger, despair, and a glimmer of hope all arrived at the same time, and what they did with all of that. How they handled a key supplier going bankrupt. How over a thousand customers were waiting, with barely five cancellations, because Stefan and Lotte write emails from the heart. This is a story about a perfect sustainable brand. It is a story about what it really costs to build one, and why that cost feels worth it. Explore the brand at https://nooch.earth/

What happens when you lose the one thing your career depends on?  Judit Nagy was a news anchor in Hungary. Her schedule ran on adrenaline and early alarm calls. Then burnout arrived quietly, and not long after, a near death experience during childbirth took her voice entirely. Literally. She woke from a coma and could not speak. Surgery failed. Recovery was not guaranteed.  What she built from that silence is the episode.  In this conversation, Judit shares how chocolate making taught her patience and self-expression before she had words to speak.  She talks about the internal messages we carry from childhood, the ones that make us say yes when we mean no, and perform when we need to rest. And she gives us something practical: breathing, posture, warm-up rituals that change how we show up before we even open our mouths.  Key takeaways from this episode:  Why losing your voice can be the beginning of finding it  How internal drivers from childhood shape the way we communicate today  The Choco Coaching method and how the senses unlock what words cannot  Practical breathing and posture techniques you can use before any presentation or difficult conversation  Why your voice is your business card and your communication is your power  Get in touch with her, here: https://www.juditnagy.info/choco-coaching

Most people think that having more, more experience, more resources, more certainty, is what makes building easier. Arthur Salkin has been doing this for over 20 years and he will tell you the opposite. In this episode we get into the real mechanics of building across uncertainty. How clarity works as a decision tool when emotions are high. How to identify the problems worth solving and ignore the noise. How to lead people when nobody knows exactly where things are going. And what it actually costs you when you choose the easy option over the right one. He also talks about something most people with his track record skip. A moment where he had to walk away from a company he built with people close to him, and what it took to stop letting it hurt and start understanding what it was telling him. Honest, grounded, and very concrete. This is the kind of conversation that gives you something to think about long after it ends.

Katrijn woke up one morning and couldn't speak, couldn't write, couldn't get back to the person she was the day before, and she had to decide what to do with that. In this episode she talks about what it actually looks like to build work around what you have, not what you planned, including the moment a stranger's creative chaos became her unexpected calling. If you're somewhere between who you were and who you're becoming, and you're not sure the two will ever connect, this one is for you.

How Your Voice Shapes Your Personal Brand Sound is something we experience every day, yet very few people think about how powerful it really is. In this episode, María Lucia Romero speaks with Christophe Strotz, singer, creative audio producer, and Managing Director of Linster Studios in Luxembourg. Their conversation explores the emotional power behind sound and why tone of voice plays a deeper role in communication and branding than many people realize. Christophe shares his personal story, from arriving in Luxembourg as an adopted child from South Korea to discovering how music allowed him to connect with people even before he fully understood the language around him. Through that experience, he began to understand something powerful. Sound communicates emotion faster than words. Together, María Lucia and Christophe reflect on how tone of voice shapes the way we connect with others, whether in personal relationships, public speaking, leadership, or brand communication. From the recognizable sound of global brands to the simple act of recording and listening to your own voice, this episode invites listeners to think about communication in a completely different way. Because sometimes, the most powerful message is not what we say.It is how we sound when we say it.

What does it truly mean to lead when you are the only one of your kind in the room? Sharon March joins me to explore the powerful acronym WIN: What’s Important Now. With over 25 years in corporate finance and international boardrooms, Sharon offers a perspective on leadership that goes far beyond strategy. We talk about the essential "inner work" of defining your values before the world tries to define them for you. Sharon shares her journey of dealing with high-pressure environments with a "can-do" attitude, the importance of quality education as a lifelong anchor, and why feeling uncomfortable is often the surest sign of growth. This episode is an invitation to stop second-guessing your seat at the table and start trusting the foundation you’ve built. It’s a warm, honest look at how character, ethics, and a simple question can shift the way we show up in our lives and our careers.