Sometimes, all I need is ten minutes.
Ten minutes sitting in a café, enjoying an espresso, and suddenly everything around me seems to disappear.
The room, the smell of coffee, the sound of people talking, the light coming through the windows – somehow, these small moments bring me a sense of calm and happiness that is difficult to describe.
At some point, I realized that I didn’t want to keep that feeling to myself.
I wanted to share my happiness with other people.
I have always wanted to do something meaningful in my life – something that creates value beyond myself. I feel genuinely happy when other people are happy. Perhaps that is why these small moments have always meant so much to me: if a place can give me a little peace, joy or inspiration, I want other people to have the chance to experience that too.
That was how I began writing about cafés and places on Google Maps.
At first, I simply wanted to tell people about places that had given me a beautiful moment. I wanted someone else to discover a café, sit down for ten minutes, and perhaps experience the same feeling.
But gradually, something unexpected happened.
When a review became more than a review
One of the places I wrote about was Bubbles, a small café in Ludwigsburg.
I took the photograph myself and tried to capture not only the coffee, but what it felt like to be there: the view through the window, the greenery, the historic surroundings, the vintage atmosphere and the feeling that you could simply stay there for hours.
[Google Maps contribution – Bubbles]
My contribution has since been viewed more than 5,000 times on Google Maps.
But the number itself wasn’t what stayed with me.
Rebecca and the Bubbles team replied to my review and told me that I had described exactly what they wanted to offer their guests.
That meant much more to me than a high number of views.
I had tried to put into words what I had felt in that café – and the people who created the place recognized themselves in those words.
For the first time, I began to understand that perhaps a review could do more than recommend a place.
It could tell its story.
Then I discovered that I loved writing
A similar moment happened at Rösterei Fröhlich.
I wrote about the contrast between the modern entrance and the feeling of stepping back into the 1960s and 1970s once you move further into the café.
I wrote about the vintage furniture, the warm wood, the espresso and, most importantly, the passion I felt from the people running the roastery.
[Google Maps contribution – Rösterei Fröhlich]
Afterwards, the owner wrote to me that I had captured exactly the feeling they wanted their guests to experience.
She even told me that the photograph I had taken was beautiful.
That review made me realize something about myself:
I love writing.
Writing brings a strange kind of calm to me.
At the same time, it allows me to help other people make better use of their precious time.
There are so many places in a city, and so little time to discover them. If I can tell someone about a place that might give them a beautiful ten minutes, an hour of peace, a good coffee or simply a moment away from everyday life, then I feel that the writing has a purpose.
And perhaps this is what makes writing meaningful to me:
I can find peace in the process while hopefully creating a little happiness for someone else.
Then Google showed me that people were reading
What started as something very personal gradually reached a much larger audience than I had expected.
My Google Maps contributions received:
14,803 new views in May 2026.
36,130 new views in June.
40,701 new views in July.
That means my contributions received 91,634 new views in just three months.
Today, I have 89 reviews and 79 photos on Google Maps and have reached Level 6 as a Local Guide.
I don’t see these numbers as a measure of success in themselves.
What fascinates me is what they made me realize:
There are people out there who are looking for exactly these small pieces of local knowledge.
Someone is searching for a café.
Someone wants to know what a place feels like before they visit.
Someone is looking for somewhere to spend an hour, have a coffee, read a book or simply breathe.
And sometimes, a photograph or a few carefully chosen words can help them find it.
From Google Maps to Green Espresso
At some point, my contributions on Google Maps became more than individual reviews.
They developed into a small independent project called Green Espresso.
Green Espresso gave me the opportunity to go further: to look behind places, talk to people, ask questions and understand what makes a place special.
I began to realize that I wasn’t only interested in coffee.
I was interested in the stories behind places.
The people who create them.
The ideas that keep them alive.
The atmosphere that makes somewhere memorable.
And the small details that might otherwise go unnoticed.
This gradually led me towards something I had never originally planned:
writing as a profession.
What began with cafés and coffee has opened up a much wider world for me – stories about places, people, culture, gastronomy, sustainability and the small details that make everyday life meaningful.
I am now exploring this path as a writer, allowing the curiosity that first drew me to cafés to take me further: towards people, places and the stories behind them.
Looking back, it feels almost strange.
I didn’t start writing because I wanted to become a writer.
I started writing because I wanted to share ten minutes of happiness.
Google Maps gave those moments a place to go.
And somewhere along the way, those moments became stories.
Perhaps that is what I appreciate most about being a Local Guide:
A place that may seem ordinary to one person can become something meaningful to another – if someone takes the time to notice it, experience it and tell its story.
Maybe that is the beauty of the unplanned things in life.
Sometimes, we don’t know where a small moment will lead us.
We simply have to notice it.
