In 2004 I took up my studies at the University of Mainz. That same year Florian also moved to Mainz for his traineeship with Procter&Gamble. Both of us didn't know our way around, so we independently joined AIESEC, a cool student club of like-minded international people. I still had the travel bug from backpacking Australia and Florian knew AIESEC from his time in India. So the inevitable happened: We met at the AIESEC Christmas party in 2004. There, Florian showed me quite plainly, that he liked me... But despite all his efforts I attached no importance to it and later forgot about the cute Dutch guy altogether... As a new member to AIESEC I volunteered to organise the whole party. I simply was not into dating that night - tough luck for Florian. So it was not until December 22, that our romance officially began... But as you all know, eventually something clicked!!
This time the AIESEC crowd went salsa dancing. And whatever it was, our spellbinding salsa skills or just the vibe of the night, that December 22, 2004 sealed our love :-) It also laid the foundations to overcome our next big challenge: 1,5 years of long-distance relationship. Florian had to return to the Netherlands for his thesis... But not only did we make it through these times, our love grew day by day and those lousy 350km between Mainz and Enschede soon lost their sense of threat. In 2005 I picked up some Dutch and learned about their weird habits, such as eating dust-dry hagelslag. Florian, on the other hand, found my Saxon dialect a hard nut to crack. So we talked English first. Meanwhile we invented our own language of 80% German and 20% Dutch-Spanish-creative mix.
