From the US to Holland for Love

You know I love a good international love story, so today I'm happy to have American Tiffany Jansen send a guest post from the Netherlands about how she met her Dutch husband. Enjoy...!

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So, I’m cleaning out the drawers of the nightstand next to my bed when I come across an old diary of
mine. I had started it back in the winter of 2006 as a means of helping me through a recent break-up. I
decide to sit down for a read.

Eventually I got over this guy. According to the diary, I did this by convincing myself that I would end
up growing old and dying alone. But then, this is nothing new – I’ve always had a penchant for the
dramatics.

Skipping through the embarrassingly low-confident, heart-broken dribble (“Come on,” I’m yelling at the diary. “That guy was a rat!”), I come to my account of a trip to Europe in July of 2007. What really strikes me about this entry is the part where I predict “Wherever my soulmate is, I have a feeling he’s not going to be American.” Apparently I had forgotten my earlier entry where I doomed myself to spinsterhood
for life.

The fact that I fantasized about meeting an exotic foreign hunk is nothing spectacular. Tons of American women dream of being swept off their feet by a suave European. It’s when I read the following entry that I get goosebumps: “I’ve met the man I’m going to marry.” That was in the fall of 2007. That’s when I met the man who stole my heart.

Now what does this have to do my prediction in the entry before, you ask. Well, let me rephrase that
last sentence in the above paragraph… That’s when I met the Dutchman who stole my heart. Though
that entry is followed by nothing but blank pages, much has happened since then. Four months later, we were engaged. Eight months after that, we were married and I was Mrs. Jansen. Mrs. Jansen with a one-way ticket to the Netherlands.

Hard to believe it’s been almost two years since I left the US to make the Netherlands my home. The
saga continues of course: residence permits, driver’s licenses, language classes, international clubs,
naturalization requirements, etc. But finding that diary somehow made it all finally hit home. I saw what I lost, what I gained, what changed, what’s the same, and how so much can happen in such a short period of time.

It’s amazing where life takes us and how, somehow, we instinctively know where that will be. I guess
that’s why they always tell you to follow your heart.

Tiffany and her dog moved to the Netherlands in 2008. Like so many expats in the Netherlands, Tiffany’s move was a result of being swept off her feet by a Dutchie. Tiffany writes about her dutchification adventures at Clogs and Tulips: An American in Holland and teaches theater and musical theater workshops at Little Broadway.