• 5 months ago
A woman met the “love of her life” while on a girls’ trip to Italy - and less than a year later they’ve moved in.

Quirine Brouwer, 27, met partner Giovanni Moioli, 30, on Bumble while joking around with her pals.

After five days of “drinking wine, eating pasta and being a tourist” they went on their first date.

They managed to squeeze three meetups into the 10-day trip - and began a long-distance relationship immediately afterwards.

Five months later, she asked to move in - and two weeks ago (07/24), they began renting a flat together in Milan.

Quirine, a freelance copywriter from Rotterdam, The Netherlands, said: “This was the best decision of my life - we’re just on the same level with everything.

“In a very interesting period of my life, this seemed so uncomplicated.

“Living together made so much sense.

“Every time we’d visit each other, we’d stay with each other for weeks, anyway.

“It’s all been very easy.”

Quirine’s friends decided to whisk her away to Italy after she started suffering from work-related burnout.

She was having panic attacks, had to quit her job as a content creator and move back in with her parents.

The trip was planned for September 2023, and up until the last minute, she didn’t even want to go.

“I couldn’t work, couldn’t afford rent, and had to move back in with my parents,” she said.

“I didn’t want to go - I was having panic attacks up until the day before.

“But I decided to go, in the end.

“It felt like time to start completely anew.”

The girls rented an AirBnB - a “big, pink villa” - and planned to relax for 10 days.

Two nights into the trip, they started playing around on each others’ dating apps.

Quirine said: “We decided to open Bumble - we were having wine one night.

“It felt like a typical girl moment.

“We made a game out of the names, because so many guys had the same name.

“And we were hoping we might find someone with a boat, to take us out onto the river.”

Quirine’s friends came across Giovanni’s profile, and Quirine secretly swiped right.

She loved that he was “a creative,” and found him really attractive.

But, not wanting to ruin the girls’ night, decided not to message him first - which meant the conversation timed out.

“I woke up to a message from him on Instagram,” she added.

“He said, ‘hey, we didn’t get the chance to talk on Bumble.’

“He invited me for a drink.

“I think I was feeling quite spontaneous - I thought it could be nothing.

“But even if it was a bad date overall, it was a really romantic setting.”

Feeling guilty for ditching the girls’ trip, Quirine checked in with her friends.

But they encouraged her to go - telling her it was time she had some fun.

The pair met up in one of the local towns, and spent the evening drinking Aperol spritz at a local bar.

“We really hit it off,” Quirine added.

“We drank Aperol spritz, sat by the lake, watched the sunset and talked for hours.

“I can’t even explain how perfectly romantic it was.”

Category

😹
Fun
Transcript
00:00I recently moved to Northern Italy to live there with my boyfriend.
00:11And my dog Louis came too.
00:12By popular request, I'm going to do an apartment series in which I take you along in the whole
00:16decorating process.
00:17This is what we're working with right now, so as you can see, a lot needs to be done.
00:21The apartment came furnished, and as a vintage maximalist, I basically hate everything in
00:26there, so everything has to go.
00:29Our first step is making a gallery wall, just so that the sad empty walls look a little
00:33less sad.
00:34So first we put everything on the floor to make a general layout.
00:37I already had all these frames from my previous apartment.
00:40Then we started and prayed it would work on the wall.
00:42Usually I just make my gallery wall as I go, by just randomly putting on frames.
00:46But my boyfriend is a bit more detail oriented, so we measured out things this time.
00:50When he put in the first nail, it turned out the wall was made of concrete and way too
00:53hard for normal nails, so he quickly drove to the hardware store to get concrete nails
00:57while I continued unpacking.
00:59And the nail nails worked perfectly, so we could finally start hanging the paintings.
01:02I was chief layout while my boyfriend put in the nails, as I am way too impatient and
01:06tend to ruin the wall or my fingers.
01:08And the whole process of hanging the paintings went pretty smooth, and took us about an hour.
01:12And then we decided to put one of my hanging plants there, so we could put the leaves over
01:15the frames, which I think turned out so cute.
01:18And then it was done.
01:19I'm really happy with the result, and I can't wait until we get the furniture to match,
01:22cause the plan is to put a dark dresser here with my record player and records.
01:26And then we had some frames left over, so we decided to use those in the kitchen.
01:30We do not really have a plan for the kitchen yet, so at least these frames cheated up a
01:33bit for now, but we definitely want to add more details in the kitchen later.
01:36Thank you for watching, and I will see you in part 2.
01:40Come and explore my local bookstore in Italy with me.
01:42I recently moved here, and I had only seen the bookstore briefly before, so today it
01:46was time to finally go and browse.
01:48As you can see, the city I moved to is so so cute.
01:51It's absolutely beautiful and very historical.
01:54The bookstore is called Libri e Libri, and of course it's an Italian bookstore, so they
01:57don't have that many English books, but I think this section was pretty good.
02:01It's a pretty large shelf.
02:02And this book immediately caught my eye, and I also saw they have one of my absolute favorite
02:07books.
02:08This is my bible, so that was a very good sign.
02:10But I didn't see that many books I was interested in at the moment.
02:13I was mostly interested in all the gorgeous Italian editions I saw.
02:17I really need to learn fluent Italian so I can get these beautiful covers, cause they're
02:21amazing.
02:22I especially was obsessed with the fairy oak editions in the original language.
02:26They are so cute and I want to read them in Italian.
02:29So that is my goal for now.
02:30And in the end, I got this book.

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