Love at first sight of German boy and Vietnamese girl

GERMANY - Jan Hilgendorf never thought he would be guided by fate, but a chance meeting with Loan challenged all his views on love and fate.

"The first time I saw Loan, I exclaimed in my heart 'this girl is so attractive'", Jan recalled the moment he met Loan at a gathering of the MBA class, WHU Business School (Wissenschaftliche Hochschule für Unternehmensführung) in late September 2019.

Jan "got lost" in this class due to a mistake by the school about the time of another graduate class, so they suggested he transfer to MBA.

"During the admission interview, a member of the admissions committee joked with me that WHU also means 'Wir heiraten untereinander' ( We marry each other ). I never expected that this mistake and joke would become my destiny," the German guy shared.

Loan and Jan during the International module course in the US, November 2019. Photo: Provided by the character

The feeling of being moved from the first conversation was also the feeling of Loan Nguyen, a Saigon girl who gave up her marketing management position at a food and beverage company to study abroad.

Having started school a week after her classmates, Loan felt like a stranger in the first few days in a house where everyone knew each other. Only at class reunions did she interact with her group of friends.

"When Jan introduced himself as 22 years old, working and studying at the same time, I was very surprised," Loan recalled. That year she was 30 years old and most of her classmates were around her age.

The coincidence of fate also created more opportunities for them. The apartment Jan rented was only a 10-minute walk from Loan's place. To approach the girl who had "captivated" him, Jan often waited at the train station, waiting for her to go to school so he could go to school with her.

After just over two weeks, the guy suggested studying together in a group. Loan was surprised and refused because "you're such a good student, you don't need to study with anyone". The guy made an excuse to call to discuss his lessons. "It's too much work, let's just study together", Loan's text message made Jan extremely happy.

From that day on, they were stuck together like glue. Loan could not stop her feelings for Jan, but it was also difficult to accept liking someone 8 years younger than her and she did not want anyone to know about this relationship. Many times, even though Jan was holding her hand, as soon as she saw her friends from afar, she would pull his hand away and walk faster to create distance.

It wasn't until the Christmas party, when their classmates deliberately paired them up to dance together as if to say "we know everything", that Loan admitted her feelings without worrying about the age gap.

The master's program gave them wonderful memories. In addition to the trip to the US, they also went to India, then took advantage of the online study days to prevent Covid and traveled all over Vietnam for more than three months.

The carefree school days also ended. After graduating, Jan returned to his old company. Loan began her journey to find a job in the context of the fiercely competitive job market in Germany after the pandemic. With no international work experience and limited German, the Vietnamese girl still pursued a career in marketing, working on branding and trademarks, so there were even more challenges.

There were times when Loan passed four rounds of competition, spent a lot of time doing practical research, was highly appreciated, but in the end was not selected because other candidates spoke better German or had experience in the European market.

"For the first time, I realized why it was so hard to find a job. Why do I have to prove myself here?" she said. "I compared myself to my friends back home who had made great strides and even questioned whether my decision to study abroad was the right one."

The pressure made Loan unable to confide in her family or friends. Only Jan understood. When she cried, he listened. When she was sad, he made her laugh. When she was depressed, he took her out to relax. When she was negative and compared herself, he always encouraged her, "The only person you need to overcome is yourself, not anyone else."

Thanks to him, Loan felt that life in Germany was still beautiful and her choice to study was still the right one, because she had the experiences she always wanted and met the love of her life. She tried hard to find a job, practiced for interviews and had late nights doing research. The joy exploded in early 2022 when she finally found the job she wanted. Loan Nguyen is currently a marketing manager for the hand sanitizer industry at a multinational consumer company in Germany.

"The job search was tough but she was determined and a bit stubborn, but that made me love her even more," said Jan, who works for a telecommunications corporation in Germany.

Jan proposed to Loan during a trip to France, June 2023. Photo: Character provided

The Vietnamese girl shared that Jan's presence in her life made her feel "no need to grow up". He solved all the difficulties and all his important plans revolved around her. For example, when he was invited to study in the US for a short time after dating for more than a month, Jan refused because he knew his girlfriend did not want to go to school anymore. Or when he wanted to ask Loan's parents for permission to move to Hamburg with him, he practiced speaking each Vietnamese sentence to communicate.

"My parents had an unhappy marriage and seeing many couples around me break up made me feel that marriage was scary," Loan said. Going to school was also a way for her to escape the constraints of marriage. "But his appearance changed everything," she said.

Loving Loan, Jan also matured. His classmates all realized that he was less eager to win and started to care more about the feelings of those around him. Loan not only helped him expand his network of friends, but also helped him see people and things from many different perspectives. Originally a guy who loved cultural diversity, loving a Vietnamese girl made him "addicted" to Vietnamese food. No matter how busy he was at work every day, Jan still learned Vietnamese because he wanted to talk to her friends and family.

Both felt that fate had miraculously brought them together. From the day they first met, they could talk non-stop about all kinds of topics, from the universe, rockets, war, world politics and economics, to culture and movies. Jan opened up a lot of knowledge to Loan that she had never known before.

"Simple happiness every day is just the pure Vietnamese meals that he eats and receives endless compliments, or when I hear him trying to learn Vietnamese with humorous sentences from Duolingo like 'The bee bit the dog', 'Is this a fish or a mug?'", Loan said.

Jan and Loan's wedding will be held in January 2023, in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Character provided

When love was ripe and work was stable, Jan consulted his family and secretly planned a trip for just the two of them in France.

During a photo shoot, when the photographer asked Loan to turn away for the photo, when she turned around, she saw the guy kneeling down and saying: "Em ơi, will you marry me?" Looking into her eyes, he trembled as he spoke the words he had prepared in advance.

"So much anxiety, excitement and awkwardness all came together in the moment she agreed. I felt like I became the happiest man because I had this kind and beautiful girl," the German guy shared.

The couple wrote a happy ending for their love story with a wedding that left emotions in the hearts of friends attending in Saigon in the spring of 2023.

In the next chapters of their lives, they aim to hold hands and explore many new lands together.

Phan Duong - Vnexpress.net

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