The engagement

This is Nadja's version of the story of our engagement. It's most certainly better than what my version would be (my version would be pretty boring).
Anyhow, click on "Read more..." to read the story.



Ok, I´m supposed to tell how Mike proposed so that it´s more exciting
than his view of the story because he knew all along that he was going to propose on that day and all. Well, I´ll try :-)
Ok, where should I start, first of all, I don´t really know anything
about proposals because they are not that exciting in Germany mainly because we don´t get an extra engagement ring. The way I thought how that all happens was that the couple at some point decides to marry, maybe the man asks the woman, but not necesserily, and then they´re engaged and buy rings together. They both wear the ring on the left hand and at the wedding they change the rings to their right hand. So, that´s how it all works in Germany, although I guess many people have decided to prefer the American version probably because they´ve seen it in so many Hollywood movies... and because it´s a lot more exciting :-). Anyways, Mike prefers the American version and so I got a most wonderful proposal :-).
But I better start telling the story itself.
Ok, Sunday was our first anniversary and Mike had told me that I
shouldn´t plan anything for that day because he had already things
planned out. He said he wanted to find a treasure with the GPS, and I
had already asked for a treasure hunt before so I wasn´t suspicious. Normally we look up an appropriate treasure (aka Cache) in the internet and then try to find it. But last time we forgot to find out we´re the treasure might be and ended up on the other side of Freiburg and the knowledge that we had forgotten to change the coordinates, so that we we´re still on the trail of the last treasure we we´re looking for. Only that that was about a month before and the treasure was probably either gone already or at least on the other side of a mountain that I didn´t want to climb. Not that it´s real treasures that people hide, last time we found a little box with a piece of paper and a pencil to write down who we are and when we found the box, it´s a bit like climbing a mountain, only there is no cross (gipfelkreuz – the sign to mark the top of the mountain. Gipfel=summit, Kreuz=cross), at least the mountains in Germany do have a cross at the top.
But I´m losing the subject.
So this time Mike said he had already looked up the coordinates so that
we know for sure that it´s not too far away and he had the coordinates in the GPS already, so I didn´t get to see the internet page with it, but it all made sense to me and so we started walking.
It was mainly all in on the coastline of the Dreisam, the little
riverish thing in Freiburg, more like a brook, but very nice (editor’s note: about 30 feet wide, and no deeper than a foot at the deepest point. Good for wading around). We went on a bridge and on the middle of it, the GPS said we we´re at the right place...only that we were standing on an intersection, so I thought it might not be the right place after all and we went back to walk under the bridge. There
again the GPS said we were on the right spot, only that there was
nothing but stones. Normally they have some sort of clue with the coordinates to help find the hidden something, so I asked Mike if he remembered the clue and he said it was kind of weird but it said "You´ll find it in love" and that we´re gonna understand it when we´re there. Well, I didn´t understand it, but it sounded weird to me too and highly suspicious :-)
But I still didn´t see what we were looking for. Mike suggested that he
could go to the other side of the river and look for something there or
we could go and look for it in the water. Now, I wasn´t convinced that
anyone would try and hide something in the water, but oh well, why not, so we walked across the bank on the stones and looked for anything.
After a while I started being worried about being at the right spot after all, but then I saw that someone had put a lot of stones together to form the word "Love", actually "Liebe" in the river. By then I knew that it wasn´t something anyone on the internet had thought up and I found a jar with a rose in it :-)
So that was really sweet and nice and all and I thought Mike had done
that to celebrate our anniversary, but when I tried to hug him and thank him for the rose and the "’love’ sign" he knelt down and asked if I would marry him :-)
And of course I said "yes" :-)
So, that´s the story :-)