Onlookers were circling him, cheering and applauding. In the center of the plaza a street performer was balancing atop a tall unicycle. Still, step one of Tom’s plan was complete – “find the biggest public place.” It seemed likely Kim might be among them, but it was impossible to spot her amid the throngs of people. That day in late May 1998, Marienplatz was crammed with travelers with backpacks, taking photos, admiring the neo-gothic architecture. Tom and John made their way to Munich’s Marienplatz, a central plaza in the middle of the city. “And that strategy was – find the biggest public place and find some way to be noticed,” he recalls. Tom decided he needed a more thorough strategy. He scribbled down his contact details – his full name, his email address, his parents’ address back home in Ohio – on a piece of paper, so that “if I ever just saw Kim walking somewhere, across the street, I could throw it to her or something.”īut still, this seemed like a long shot. So Tom and his friend John checked out of the hostel and wandered around Munich for a couple of hours. “I’m more of a ‘providence favors the prepared’ kind of guy,” he tells CNN Travel today. But Tom decided he wasn’t going to rely on fate to strike twice. Meeting Kim in the first place had felt like fate. And not only that, Tom didn’t know her last name, didn’t have her contact details and had no idea where she might be. The two young travelers ended up lying side-by-side on the grass in Munich’s English Garden, stargazing, talking about their lives, swept up in the romance of the moment.īut now it was the next day and Kim was nowhere to be seen. Tom and Kim spent all evening together, first hanging out as a group with Tom’s travel buddy John and Kim’s friend Amanda, and later, wandering the city alone. He’d crossed paths with Kim Morgan, who’d just finished up grad school at the University of Memphis, in a Munich hostel the night before. It was the summer of 1998 and Tom, a 22-year-old recent graduate of the University of Michigan, was on a six week European backpacking adventure. He’d found the woman of his dreams and somehow, less than 12 hours later, lost her – maybe forever.
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