We both now live together with our four legged room mates Zeus and Rosie in Phoenix, Arizona and have a small weekendend home in Northern Arizona along historic Route 66. Life generally is very good to us. We have a nice little house and the future looks promising. Things have however not always been that way. The story how we managed to get that far is long and winding. I'll try to make it short ;-) for you all:

Well, let's see -

Dan and I met on November 8, 1996 in Kaiserslautern, Germany. This was in a gay bar in Königstraße called the "Take Off". He was working for the US Army as a budget analyst and also as an active officer (LTC) in the Bosnia peacekeeping operation. By February 1997 we weren't just dating any more, but had developed into an item ;-).

As I completed my MS in Physics in 1998 and thus was looking around for what to do next and he had to leave Germany after working there for 10 years, we decided to move to Austin, TX together. Dan got a job with AMEX and I started in the Optics and Atomic Physics Group at University of Texas.

After one year I didn't have any choice but to leave Texas again though. I decided to continue my PhD studies at the University of Kaiserslautern in Germany and keep my eyes open for opportunities that would get me back to where I belong.

In August 2000, I was offered a job by a German software company that intended to send me to their Arizona subsidiary as a technical support engineer. This turned out to fit just perfectly into our plans as Dan had just changed employers as well and was now working for Charles Schwab in Phoenix.

Shortly after my H1-B visa petition was finally approved by the then INS in January 2001 my German employer got acquired by Intel, which turned out to be yet another lucky twist and finally put me back into the arms of my husband in March of 2001.

The legal odyssey that same sex binational couples still go through in most countries outside Northern Europe and Canada these days has been won for now. It took over 7 years, but in December 2007 I finally became a permanent resident alien, which means that our stay in my husband's home country does not depend on the whim of the economy any more.