About decor8 / decor8 ☆ holly  

❤☆decor8 (design blog): decor8 (design blog)
❤☆haus maus (personal blog): haus maus
❤☆real simple: simply stated
❤☆my husband: alternate:words
❤☆twitter: follow me
❤☆facebook: holly becker

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Many have asked what my "German Connection" is since I am an American living in Hannover, Germany since August 2009.

My husband Thorsten Becker and I met online, he read something I wrote on the topic of true femininity (not interior design related at all!) and modesty back in '98 and was impressed by it, saw my email beneath the article, and wrote to discuss the topic further. We quickly became good friends, emailing and calling daily for over a year. Then, while I was in London on holiday in Oct. '99, concierge gave me a note that he had called to be sure that I'd arrived safety and that I was having fun. That gesture of kindness from a friend completely touched my heart. I returned his call and he said he just had to meet me, my gut told me to go for it, so he flew me to Germany and I stayed with a friend of the family in her beautiful guest apartment.

After 18 days with him and his wonderful family, I knew that this was the man I would marry. We just celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary on July 14.

After maintaining a long distance relationship for 1.5 years after that, we were engaged in Hannover, Germany, he relocated to Boston, Massachusetts where he lived with my parents for three months until our wedding day. We're old fashioned like that. After we got married, we continued to live in the states, at first in Boston but then in New Hampshire. We went back and forth to Germany, spending two months each year in Hannover, then in April 2008 we took an apartment here. After 8 years of living in the states and going back and forth between countries, we decided it was time to move to Germany so I could now experience his life and culture. We moved into what was once our "vacation" apartment in August 2009 and are still here in our small one bedroom flat -- but looking for a large flat as we're dying to have our own office space at home and extra rooms for me to decorate and for our friends and family from America to stay.

I think the moral of this story is to allow yourself to be open minded to new things (back then meeting a man online was still very new and not too cool - my parents thought he would be a serial killer) and follow your gut. Listen to that inner voice. You don't always have to obey it, but at least listen. :) Oh, and never think of any mountain as too high. True love conquers all - faith can truly move mountains.

So that's my German connection. :)