The Zen Leaf

Last February, I traveled to Germany for a week to spend some time with my theyfriend, the one I call Rainstorm online. We had met in person once before, long before we started dating, but this was our first time meeting in person as partners. The nerves and excitement were equally out in full force! And once we were together, it was all giddiness and shyness and can’t-get-my-fill-of-seeing-you-or-holding-your-hand. I’m very limited in what photos I can post online, but for that first trip, the two of us were very good to take plenty of photos that didn’t include Rainstorm’s face.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever talked on the blog about how the two of us met and began to date. We both wrote fanfiction, and their first longfic was one I was reading. At one point, we began to talk in the comments about something I can’t even remember, and it prompted me to talk about my own fics (something related to characters deciding to rebel against you, maybe?). They checked my list of fics, and found the one I was currently posting was already on their list to read. So we began exchanging comments in both places.

Then in late January 2024, I started working on the trauma-dump fic I mentioned in my last writing post. When I put up the first chapter, I gave it a tag that said, “No beta how do people get betas anyway?” and Rainstorm commented “extensive talking in the comment section.” We started chatting on tumblr and decided to exchange beta services as they were starting a new fic then. We didn’t start dating for another 9-10 months, but we were fast friends long before that. And that friendship was the thing that has been the most important to us to maintain, far more than the relationship.

Anyway, back to Germany! That week of vacation, we visited several nearby cities, saw the most amazing cathedral I’ve ever seen (seriously – nothing compares to the Cologne cathedral!!), went to a farmer’s market where we got flowers (more on this in a minute), had a day-long celebration for our three-month anniversary (including a trip to a cafe that we “visited” together – me remotely – on our first date), visited a queer bookshop, watched But I’m a Cheerleader together, took a long walk along the river, kissed in the rain, found a random cat cafe and went in to pet all the cats, visited the gay district of Cologne, got coordinating tattoos (that had been planned well before we were dating), drank coffee in bed with angel/demon wing mugs, went to a wine bar, sampled local beer, visited the craziest lock bridge I’ve ever seen (Paris has nothing on Cologne’s!), saw David Tennant’s MacBeth in (movie) theatre, crammed ourselves into a photo booth for ridiculous photos, and cried when we had to separate at the end of the week. Was it the most lesbian of lesbian vacations? Yes. Yes it was.

And to cap all that off, I have to tell y’all about the farmer’s market. Again, in true lesbian fashion, we both planned to surprise each other with flowers. Only neither of us are very good at keeping secrets, so we ended up revealing the surprise at the same time (prior to any flower-purchasing), and decided instead that I would choose the flowers for them and they would gift them to me. In the end, that didn’t work either. We were at one booth and I saw what I suspected were purple thistles, but they weren’t labeled. Rainstorm asked (I barely spoke any German at this point) and confirmed that they were, indeed, thistles. Considering my chosen name, we agreed that these were perfect. Then the proprietor, when asked how much, gave them to us for free since they were the last bundle of thistles. It was kinda straight out of a fanfic/rom-com, tbh. Just perfect.

You know, I’d forgotten just how much we did together in that first visit! It was lovely to go back down memory lane and through all those photos, to see the giddiness and excitement of new love almost a year later. I’m glad I decided to write this up in full rather than cram all of my 2025 trips into a single travel post!