Maria (Catalunya) and Fuat (Turkey)

I met Fuat in Germany, in a course of the Goethe Institute, I was coming from Catalunya and he was coming from Turkey. The first week we were in the same class, sitting side by side, but his level of German was higher so the teacher told him she would send him to a higher level. However, he insisted that his level was not that good and that he’d rather stay in the current class in order to be in the same class than me. Well, I didn’t learn this until later, so we were in the same class for a month, afternoons and week-ends we might also coincide as all the students were doing more or less the same kind of activities. The course finished and we bid goodbye.

Internet use was starting to be common in those years so we kept contact through email and ICQ (similar to Messenger). The following year Easter he invited me and another friend I had gone with to Germany to Turkey so we went there for a week, and September the same year he came to Catalunya. And that was the beginning of it, we kept seeing each other at whatever opportunity we had, for business reasons he was travelling couple or more times every year to Europe and I would join him in the weekend whatever city he was going to or he would make a stop over in Barcelona. After 8 years, however, he decided we could not go on like this and we had to make a decision. So after weighting all the possibilities we decided I was moving to Turkey, and after a year of living together and seeing I could live in Turkey we got married.

Thanks very much to Maria for sending this story. If you would like to post your story on My Partner is a Foreigner, please send to info@pocketcultures.com

About the author

We feature guest posts from people all over the world. If you'd like to write one, please send us an email. Don't worry if English is not your first language, we can help with editing!