Some people collect souvenirs while traveling. I collect dating stories. And in the past two-plus years of living in Europe , I've collected many. There was the South African guy I fell madly in love with during a whirlwind weekend romance in Warsaw β only to be ghosted on Monday morning when he returned to London.
There was the Russian guy who, at the end of our first date, asked me to do a full photo shoot of him to show his Instagram fans he "lives a good life. Then there was the Belgian guy who looked nothing like his photos once we met after a month of exchanging WhatsApp messages, and the Austrian guy whom I dated for a month and who made me a PowerPoint presentation about why we should still be together six months after we broke up.
The list goes on β as does my search for love. And while the stories are fun to tell over FaceTime with my friends back in the States or over cocktails in Vienna, where I've settled, my collection of overseas dating stories has also taught me many valuable lessons.
Forget walking tours; when I first moved to Europe in , it was actually Bumble that helped me explore new cities. I learned quickly that dating a local was the best way to discover the best parts of a town and find its little hidden gems. Now that I live in Vienna, nearly all of my go-to spots are places I was taken for a date when I first arrived. I remember waking up one morning to a voice note from a guy I'd been seeing who was eager to get away over the summer.
Given that we'd had fun on our first two dates, he wanted to know whether I'd be up for going on a weekend vacation with him. While we didn't end up together in the end, we did wind up in Turkey for the weekend, and I got to experience the joy of exploring a new city and getting to know somebody over kebabs and hammams. Embracing spontaneity and experiences over outcomes has proved time and again to be the way to go.
