Note to self: Never let a good stereotype get in the way of a good love story

How a pair of feet went from soaking in the Gulf of Thailand to resting contentedly on a couch in Munich, with a few judgmental stops along the way.

What comes to your mind first, when you think of Germans?

Irrationally long sausages? Maybe uncanny punctuality?

I think of thick socks, perhaps pulled a bit too high up the shins, in a worn-out, but nevertheless never too worn pair of sandals. Quality pieces, of course. The socks, probably a knitted gift from grandma; the sandals, the third pair of the exact same model.

Or at least I thought so, before.

And it was exactly that – those banal stereotypes – that I was in the middle of explaining to a fellow traveler on a humid evening in Thailand, as we sat with our feet in the warm ocean water, watching the sun set.

 You know those evenings when the sun bathes everything in warm, orange light and you always end up with a disappointing picture of it because your camera only captures the underwhelmingly small dot in the sky and not the moment?

It was one of those evenings, that day.

If I were a little less of a rational Danish, I would probably have blamed fate for what happened while that seemingly random conversation took place. But as it is, I’ve nothing to latch onto other than it being a ridiculous coincidence.

Unromantic, I know.

Romantics might have claimed that the universe, unusually bored on that day, saw us sitting there, ant-sized, young and carefree know-it-alls, and decided to interfere. But that’s probably giving it too much credit.

So, I’ll leave it up to you to decide. Perhaps it doesn’t matter anyway, because nevertheless, it resulted in me writing this from an apartment that I share with my German boyfriend.

But that jumping way too far ahead in the story, because back on that beach four years ago, a stranger happened to sit near us, having the pleasure of listening to my unprovoked rant.

A stranger who happened to be German and, perhaps being slightly provoked, happened to walk up to us and ask which German must have hurt us.

A stranger who happened to have a friend. And that friend is now my boyfriend. And that he, though I’m slightly reluctant to admit that, is the reason I’m here.

You see, when I think of how I imagined my future as a journalist; a rootless and independent traveler (maybe you see a pattern here of my younger self being a bit too hung up on stereotypes), it feels underwhelming to admit that my first move abroad as a journalism student wasn’t driven by a strong professional passion but simply by love.

Which, written down, sounds like a rather stupid distinction. Still, it explains why I ended up in Munich of all places. Perhaps that’s also why I’m eager to make my time here more than just that.

Call me an optimist, but I hope I’ll get the chance to work here as a journalist someday. Unfortunately for me, my German would currently suggest otherwise, but luckily I can hopefully change that the next months (hence the picture, my language-hope).

And what better way to do that than to just embrace all things German?

Considering how confidently I once spoke about Germans on that beach in Thailand, I probably also owe it to get to know their country a bit better.

It seems that most of my ideas about Germany were slightly unnuanced anyway, though I might be a bit biased.

Who knows, maybe I’ll end up wearing socks with sandals one day too.