How I met my Schatz

When I was on my first exchange to Germany at age sixteen, I lived right outside of Stuttgart. Maybe twenty or thirty minutes to the Hauptbahnhof from my train stop. I was going to school at a private gymnasium. The girl who's family I was living with was Katharina, she was an only child and had a really outgoing and fun personality. The first time I met, her she assured me that she would show me how "the Germans make the party." At the time she was eighteen and I was sixteen. I generally spent most of the time with her friends (all the the 12th grade) and a lot of the students in the 13th grade.

The first four months in Germany I was dating a really "typical german" guy named Dominik. He was tall and blond and spoke the area dialect Schwäbisch. At the end of four months we broke up for some reason that wasn't really important, i guess we just stopped liking each other. Throughout the whole year at some of the parties I had been to there was a guy named Tobias who used to go to my school but had just finished his military requirements and was now in university.  I had never really noticed him before or even talked to him except for once when were introduced. Over the winter holidays, some of the thirteenth graders had a "week of celebration" and every night everyone ended up at this really great mexican bar called Cantina on Schellingstrasse. On the last night I felt like I was getting on Katharina's nerves a little bit so I sat on the other side of the bar with a hysterical (and also very German) guy named Max who had also already graduated. We we're talking for a little while and Tobias arrived with a few other guys and sat next to me. I didn't actually recognize him, but he knew me. He said "You're Abritta, right?" 

(of course all of these conversations take place in German)

I was so surprised he knew my name, I turned to him and looked at him as though I was seeing him for the first time. The kindest green eyes, that crinkled at the corners from his smile, looked back at me. I took one look at his dark brown hair that was in a mild "david beckham" spike (he doesn't do that anymore, fortunately) and grinned back at him. Immediately I was drawn to him and he tells me he felt the same. We went into our own little world and kind of zoned out everyone else. At some point his friends girlfriend told us that we should get married. We're definitely following her advice.

So it all started at Cantina, and we still eat there whenever we're in Stuttgart together.