I just got back from a lovely date with a 23 year old Turkish student I met on yesterdays’ session.
We met up at SBahn Warschauer Straße and went for a stroll over the Sunday market on RAW Gelände. The vibe was relaxed and I felt she was happy to see me. This confirmed my suspicion that she liked me because she was eager during texting.
She gave a time constraint of 40-60 minutes as she had to catch her bus to Warsaw at 16h and wanted to “complete some things before that”. So I got us a coffee and decided to take her to the Modersohnbrücke1. On the way I did some light kino: touching her shoulder, upper arm, elbow, slightly bumping into her hips. She was accepting it but didn’t reciprocate. I asked her what she thought of my cold approach yesterday to which she replied that she thought “I looked cute”. I can work with.
As we approached the bridge she loosened the time constraint and said that she may have time to check out Boxhagener Platz after all. This confirmed my suspicion that the initial time constraint was actually quite flexible.2 We sat on the bridge and I decided to go in for a quick kiss because I felt there was sufficient attraction. She gently brushed me off by turning her cheek but didn’t take it badly. I said “well, it’s my job to try and your job to resist” to which she laughed and we walked further towards Boxhagener Platz to relax on a bench.
She invited me to get some Berlin kebab with her, as this was on her to-do list. A bit reluctant to cheat on my calorie-counting meal plan I nevertheless complied because the girl was starting to warm up. She invited me to visit her in Warsaw, and I wanted to kiss her before she left to make sure I would be able to seal the deal in Poland. I suspected I lacked sufficient comfort for the first kiss attempt, which was fair because I’ve known her for less than an hour. As we sat with our kebab I decided to escalate verbally, asking her what she thought about me and our time together so far. “I felt happy to meet you because I like having a friend to explore Berlin with and get kebabs with”…
Uh oh. My alarm bells were starting to get off. I needed to re-establish that this is in fact a date, lest I get friendzoned. I confessed that I approached her because I liked her figure, especially the hips and her dark wavy hair. She giggled. She said that a relationship wouldn’t make much sense as she lived in Warsaw and I live in Berlin. I took this opportunity to reframe our encounter as “her Berlin adventure”, which she responded well to.3 She mentioned that she was enjoying our date - literally using the word “date”. Bingo. This date is back on track. I could feel her becoming completely comfortable with me. The table on which we sat was very narrow, so our faces were close together as we were staring into each others eyes. She said I look like Leonardo DiCaprio.
She gave us more time and I decided to bounce her to the park across the bridge where I first failed to kiss her. Walking there, she said she felt that she didn’t expect to meet a guy like me in Berlin and felt that she was in a movie. As we were crossing the bridge, I took her hand to pull her into me because she was walking in the bicycle lane as a cyclist was approaching. I released my grip to check if she would let go of my hand. She didn’t, and we walked hand in hand toward the park.
Sitting on the bench, I had my hand around her shoulder as we watched kids play on the grass. She told me she started journalling recently and that she would write happy things about this day. I came up with the following gambit to try and kiss her:
I said I would try to dictate what she would write that day: “Dear diary, I met this guy in Berlin yesterday. He looked cute. We went to get kebab together, walked over this bridge, and I’m now sitting next to him. He draws ever closer, and is now looking at my lips. Our eyes lock, and then he went in and kissed me”. As I was saying these lines, I moved my face closer and I went for the kiss. She offered no resistance whatsoever and passionately kissed me back. She said it felt right.
We kissed some more as I was walking her back to the SBahn to catch her bus and agreed I would try to meet her in Warsaw at the end of June. To be continued…