Everyone always asks us, ‘how did you meet?’ It’s quite confusing for the average person to try and understand how a New Zealander and an American end up married and living together in Germany. With a German dog (but a French breed). It makes the ‘where are you from?’ question confusing too when travelling!

Perhaps in this day and age, the expected response to how we met  is the internet. However, that’s not the case. Nick and I met in a bar on New Years Eve in Christchurch, New Zealand. We met each others’ gaze across the bar. Nick was travelling through Christchurch with work, and I was at home visiting family after having moved to Perth, Australia earlier in the year following our traumatic earthquake.

The bar was a little different. It was a shipping container or two that was converted into a bar. It’s no longer there, the original building has been rebuilt, but it’s still called the same thing – ‘The Carlton.’ We were able to get to know each other over the next few days before I had to return to Australia (and he to America).

After a whirlwind long distance relationship, Nick proposed in Central Park in New York on one of the visits that I took – and we were married five days later. A few months later I upped and moved to the USA, only to end up in Germany three months later.