‘I kept bumping into him during a bachelor trip in Italy’

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With a cocktail in your hand sighing that you never want to go home is not so strange on a holiday. But of course you can also decide to just fulfill that intention.

Pauline (36) lives with Marco and is mother of Maya (2).

“It was the bachelorette trip of one of my best friends. The four of us went to Florence; we would of course party there until we dropped. Which worked fine. On the first night I got into a conversation with Marco in a bar. He was half-Dutch, half-Italian. After he had spent his childhood in North Holland, he went to study in Florence and stayed there.

We kissed that night and exchanged phone numbers before I got back into the partying. But the next evening I ran into him again. And this time we couldn’t stop talking.

Going out together

“There are no coincidences,” my friends shouted loudly, urging me to go with him. I don’t just go home with a man I barely know, so we compromised. We agreed to go out together the next day.

“We cried, solemnly promised to see each other as soon as possible”

Marco and were inseparable from each other and without him making a single suggestion in that direction, I myself suggested that I go with him to his house that evening. The next morning he took us neatly to the airport. Marco and I wept, solemnly promised to see each other again as soon as possible. My friends were cheerleading on the sidelines.

Valentine

At home, of course, life went on as usual. My girlfriend’s wedding came, I was at work, and all the while Marco and I texted every day. Until he sent a plane ticket for Valentine’s Day. Quite cheeky, I thought, because who said I could just take time off from work?

“He sent a plane ticket for Valentine’s Day”

But of course he meant it sweetly and to be honest: I could easily arrange those days off. And so I flew to Florence, a month after we first met. The five days that followed were a dream. Marco was nothing like the boyfriends I’d had before. He actually turned out to be my best friend, and then the sex was more than I’d ever experienced.

Also read – Expat mothers say: ‘We hardly ever go back to the Netherlands’ >

Back to the Netherlands

Once again we were crying at the airport when I came home, again we texted day and night, after which he came to the Netherlands a month later. It soon became clear to both of us: this was serious business. As soon as we had time and could afford it, we flew back and forth between Amsterdam and Florence to see each other as much as possible. I stayed longer and longer in Italy, until Marco finally changed jobs and moved in with me temporarily in the Netherlands. There I found out after a year of dating that I was pregnant.

“I had always wanted to live abroad”

I have PCOS, getting pregnant may have never been possible, the gynecologist had once said. That it was now hit felt like a miracle. For four months Marco and I doubted where we would settle permanently, until we took the plunge: it had to be Italy. As a wedding and event planner, I could work anywhere in the world, and I had always wanted to live abroad.

I gave birth to our daughter in the Netherlands, but by then we had already furnished our house outside the city, in the hills of Tuscany. Maya has been going there once a week since she was three months old with a Dutch nanny with two other children, but I want to do her in a Tuscan school later. Marco speaks as much Italian as possible with her, I Dutch. Although we mess up everything in practice; she is my ‘bambina’ and his ‘darling’.

Sticking around in Italy

Yes, I ended up staying in Italy because of my vacation. But it has always been my dream to live abroad. That Marco and I met this way doesn’t feel like it was a coincidence. Also because we have remained connected with the Netherlands. We fly up and down several times a year; Marco also has family and friends in the Netherlands.

I don’t know if we’ll ever return. A further foreign country also beckons, we can live anywhere in the world. Children are already growing up more and more internationally; I think we’re just helping Maya with it.”

This article is featured in the Kek Mama Summer Special 2022.

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