Our story
Hello YOU,
We are Jana from Germany and Blake from Canada. You might wonder how we met since we are from two different parts of the world. So here is our story…
How it all started
Our story started back in 2012. This is when I (Jana) decided to do a semester abroad in Surfers Paradise in Australia (at the Gold Coast – highly recommend a semester abroad to everyone!!) while Blake decided to do his first longer trip overseas around Australia in a camper van with a buddy. After my semester on the Gold Coast, I still had some time left until the start of my semester back home. So what do you do when you still have time left in Australia?! Oh yes – travel and party!
This is how I ended up at the Gilligans, also known as Cairns’ party hostel. Blake and his buddy used their van more for travelling and less for sleeping in it. This is why they ended up in the same 10 dorm bed in the GIlligans. (Yes, I do believe that everything happens for a reason 😉)
Blake is someone who always brings people together. Most of the people know that he makes everyone feel comfortable and included straight away. In this case it was by playing drinking games in our dorm room. Oh, what a “love story” that was…
A “three-day-travel-romance” (as Blake likes to call it) turned into endless emails for the next 6,5 years, while both of us were living our uni and travel life separately. In 2018 Blake “made the move” and reached out to me “to see where this was going”.
So in autumn 2018 we decided to meet up again. Two weeks in Mexico – what could technically go wrong?
When we reconnected in Mexico six years later
We were both pretty nervous meeting for the first time again after so many years. (To be fair, we did meet up on Kho Tao in Thailand in 2015. But I was in a committed relationship back then. This is why it only came down to one party night at the beach together). I had so many questions in my head: How do we greet each other? Do we hug, kiss, shake hands?! And what if that spark wasn’t there anymore? Or even worse: What if it was?
Already on day three into the trip, we knew this wasn’t just another travel romance so we soon worked out a “plan” how our relationship could work (everyone who knows me also knows how much I love to plan, being German and all that 😉).
Being a high school teacher, I could use my holidays to visit Blake in Canada or elsewhere in the world. This is how we spent the next 1.5 years catching up in Canada (several times), Germany, Guatemala, Belize, Bali and Hong Kong until Blake came over to Germany at the beginning of 2020 before the world came to a halt (thanks to you, corona).
Struggles in Germany
Getting the working visa (probably the biggest challenge of all as Germany loves its bourocracy and EVERYTHING has to be by the books, but that’s a different story), learning (or not learning) the German language, finding a job, being away from friends and family and a lot more were all challenges we had to face at the beginning of Blake’s move to Germany. Luckily, Blake got a job and the working visa (in that order) just in time before Covid forced everything and everyone to shut down.
Fast forward to mid-2021, Blake is still in Germany with only a month in Canada last Christmas (and first being denied to re-enter Germany, which made us celebrate New Year’s Eve apart from each other – also another story).
Travelling during covid times
In these past 1.5 years together in Germany, we were able to do a road trip to Slovenia and Croatia in summer of 2020, visited the Greek Islands in autumn 2020 and Southern Germany in spring 2021 with a camper van (since hotels were still closed back then).
We just spent the last 5 weeks of my summer holidays together in Canada since Blake wanted to prove to me that Canada also has a summer and not just cold long winters. Luckily, he was right.
Due to some health issues in Blake’s family, he will stay in Canada for the next year until it will be time for our WORLD TRIP in summer 2022. 😊 We cannot wait!
