A couple's chance meeting on the shores of Byron Bay.

It was a bright summer afternoon in Byron Bay, Australia, back in early 2003. After soaking up the sun for hours, Gianna Mazzeo decided to cool off with a swim in the ocean.

While emerging from the water, Gianna spotted a group of men playing soccer farther along the beach, their voices calling to one another as they kicked the ball across the sand.

At 27 years old, Gianna, an Australian of Italian descent, had spent much of her life traveling across Europe. As she watched, she assumed the group of men must be from somewhere in Europe, but she couldn't quite place the language they were speaking.

As she walked back to her towel, Gianna couldn’t help but find herself watching one of the players, who was completely absorbed in the game and unaware of her gaze.

“I thought he was incredibly handsome,” she reflects now.

Gianna had traveled to Byron Bay with two friends, one of whom, Alessandra, was visiting from Italy. It was because of Alessandra that Gianna, who lived 1,600 kilometers away in Melbourne, found herself in Byron Bay in the first place.

“She’s from the Amalfi Coast, and I’d visited her there—those beaches are stunning. So when she came to visit me in Australia, I thought, ‘I’m going to take her somewhere truly special,’” Gianna shares with Dinogo Travel. “And that’s how I ended up taking her to Byron Bay.”

“Trying to figure out how to grab his attention”

Byron Bay, a charming coastal town in New South Wales, is famous for its surfing culture, breathtaking sunsets, relaxed vibe, excellent food, and lively beach bars. Alessandra and Gianna were also vacationing with another friend who was celebrating her 30th birthday, so there was no shortage of opportunities for fun and partying.

On that January day, as they relaxed on the sand, Gianna nudged her friends and pointed out the group of soccer players, including the one who had caught her attention.

“Alessandra and I were just sitting on the beach, watching the guys play, and I remember trying to think of a way to get his attention,” Gianna recalls. “But I was too shy to actually do it.”

As the day began to wind down, Gianna came up with an idea.

“In Australia, we have this tradition where we pick a spot on the beach and tell each other, ‘Let’s meet back here.’ You don’t really move around,” she explains. “I thought maybe he and his friends did the same thing.”

With that in mind, Gianna and her friends went back to the beach early the next morning, intentionally setting up near the same spot where the guys had been playing soccer the day before.

“I wanted it to seem like a coincidence,” Gianna admits. “But it wasn’t.”

As she soaked up the early morning sun and listened to the rhythmic sound of the waves, Gianna felt her eyelids grow heavy. Before long, she drifted off into a nap.

A short while later, Gianna was jolted awake by the sounds of laughter and shouting.

Shielding her eyes from the sun, she glanced up. Her plan had worked—just a few meters away, the group of soccer players were chatting excitedly in that language she couldn’t quite place.

Gianna immediately spotted the guy from the day before. In that instant, their eyes met and locked.

“We exchanged smiles,” Gianna recalls. “And then he walked over to talk to me.”

She quickly found out his name—Sebastian Guggenberger, a 28-year-old German engineering student who was spending a semester working in Sydney as part of his university course.

A few days earlier, some of Sebastian’s German friends had flown in to visit him, and together they made the eight-hour drive from Sydney to Byron Bay for a weekend of bar-hopping and surfing.

Talking to a girl on the beach was something Sebastian had never done before, he admits to Dinogo Travel.

“But it just felt like the right thing to do,” Sebastian reflects today. “She looked up and smiled, and I thought, ‘I really need to go over there.’”

After a while, Sebastian’s friends stopped their soccer game and joined the conversation. The two groups decided to meet later that evening at a popular local bar in Byron Bay, The Beach Hotel.

Later that evening, while waiting for the German guys to arrive, Gianna and her friends discussed the situation.

Gianna admitted she was interested in Sebastian, but her friend, who was about to turn 30, confessed she was also interested in him.

“This is pretty ridiculous,” Gianna laughs now. “But I said to her, ‘Alright, as a birthday gift, I won’t make a move. Consider it my present to you. I’ll step back.’”

When the Germans arrived and greeted the three women, Sebastian immediately started talking to Gianna’s friend.

Gianna remembers feeling her heart drop. “I thought, ‘Maybe he’s more interested in her than me.’”

But then Sebastian turned to Gianna and offered to buy her a drink.

“We walked to the bar together,” she says. “And it was clear we had a connection.”

Gianna says her friend took the situation in stride—Gianna’s promise to step aside had been more of a playful joke than a serious gesture. After all, none of them expected the night to lead to anything serious.

At the end of a night spent talking, drinking, and dancing, Gianna and Sebastian exchanged phone numbers.

Sebastian was supposed to head back to Sydney in a couple of days, but he realized he wasn’t ready to say goodbye just yet.

He decided to stay longer in Byron Bay, calling his work to arrange some extra time off.

It wasn’t something he typically did, but this time, it just felt right.

“I thought, ‘Why not?’” he recalls now.

A holiday romance.

Gianna says it was easy to get swept away by the romantic atmosphere in Byron Bay.

Gianna and Sebastian spent their days exploring Byron Bay’s stunning coastal trails, and their nights getting to know each other better at bars with beautiful ocean views.

“I realized he was smart, charming, laid-back, and well-traveled,” Gianna shares.

One of the highlights was the day they hiked to the Cape Byron lighthouse, a striking white structure located at the easternmost point of mainland Australia.

“We went to the lighthouse together—it was a beautiful, romantic experience,” Sebastian recalls.

“We really hit it off,” says Gianna.

Saying goodbye after such a perfect week was difficult for both of them.

“But he had already extended his stay in Byron for me, so I was really grateful for the extra time we had together,” Gianna says.

As they parted ways, they talked about the possibility of Sebastian visiting Gianna before his time in Australia was over.

Back in Melbourne, Gianna reconnected with a guy she had met just before her trip to Byron Bay.

When Sebastian called her one day and suggested coming to visit for the weekend, Gianna had to let him down gently.

“I told him, ‘You’re welcome to visit, but I have to be honest—I’ve met someone, though it’s not serious.’ It was still early days, and I didn’t want to lie to him. I think he was a little disappointed,” Gianna explains.

For Sebastian, this phone conversation sparked a deeper realization.

“Normally, I would have thought, ‘Okay, it was fun, whatever.’ But this time, it really hit me differently, and I realized I had stronger feelings than I expected,” he recalls.

“I thought, ‘I really shouldn’t let this go.’ It’s hard to explain, but it felt like there was something inside me telling me to follow this path.”

Even so, Sebastian didn’t want to get more involved if Gianna was happy with someone else, so he chose not to visit.

One day, while talking to her mother, Gianna found herself comparing the two men and reflecting on how she felt about each of them.

“I said, ‘The guy from Melbourne, he’s the kind of guy I usually attract—someone who’ll just lead me on or hurt me in the end,’” Gianna recalls telling her mother.

“Then I said, ‘But I’ve met this other guy who’s really different. He seems like the type who probably won’t break my heart.’”

About a month later, Gianna called Sebastian out of the blue to reconnect. He asked her about the other guy.

It didn’t work out, Gianna explained.

Relieved, Sebastian agreed to come visit her.

The 2003 Formula One race was happening in Melbourne that weekend, and Gianna had tickets to it.

“It was wonderful, he met my family and they all liked him. I showed him around the city, and we had a great time,” Gianna says.

During the weekend, they also discussed the idea of Gianna visiting Sebastian in Germany that summer.

“Not as a couple, just friends catching up,” Gianna explains. “We were both laid-back about it and didn’t expect anything to come of it.”

But meeting Sebastian had sparked in Gianna a growing desire to make a big change in her life.

“My life had always been pretty predictable,” she says. “I finished high school, went to university, and as soon as I graduated, I landed a job. I was working as a sales representative for a pharmaceutical company.”

“I always tried to follow the rules, but I knew I needed to break free and do something different.”

Within a few months, Gianna had left her job and sold her Melbourne apartment—deciding to head to Germany for more than just a week’s holiday, but as part of a longer, open-ended European adventure.

This decision wasn’t solely about Sebastian, Gianna explains. It was a chance to explore Europe, visit family in Italy, and discover new places along the way.

Before leaving, Gianna completed a TEFL course, planning to teach English as a foreign language. She thought she might teach in Spain or possibly even head to Japan after her time in Europe.

But first, she made her way to Upper Bavaria, to Rosenheim, where Sebastian lived.

Taking a leap of faith

“I picked her up from the airport in Munich,” Sebastian remembers. “At the time, I was living in a student flat with a bunch of other students, and she moved in with me. It was a tiny room, but we made it work.”

Sebastian’s roommates were amazed that a girl had come all the way from Australia to visit him, but they warmed to Gianna instantly.

“Everyone adores her,” says Sebastian. “She has this ability to connect with anyone.”

Over the following months, Gianna explored Europe, soaking in the sights of Germany, Scotland, Italy, Ireland, and Vienna, with Sebastian joining her whenever his academic schedule allowed.

By October, Gianna began to realize that her European adventure was nearing its end.

“I need to go back,” she told Sebastian. “Or I’ll have to find work.”

“Maybe you should just stay,” he suggested.

And so she did. Within just two weeks, Gianna landed a job at Inlingua Language School in Regensburg, teaching English as a foreign language.

Gianna’s parents, who had always seen her as the practical, level-headed middle child, were taken aback when her summer adventure in Europe turned into a more permanent move to Germany. Despite their surprise, they trusted her judgment and just wanted her to be happy.

Alessandra, Gianna’s friend from Italy who had been there when it all started in Byron Bay, was happy to have her on the same continent. However, years later, she admitted to Gianna that she had considered the whole situation a risk.

“She thought it was crazy for me to be living with someone I barely knew,” Gianna recalls. “She never thought it would last.”

But Gianna felt certain she had made the right choice.

“I didn’t care what anyone else thought,” she says. “I knew in my gut I was doing the right thing. I’d never taken a leap like this before, but I trusted myself, and I trusted him—his character, his way of thinking. I just knew it was right, and it felt right, truly.”

By Christmas 2003, Gianna and Sebastian had found their rhythm together in Germany. She had quickly bonded with his family, and both were determined to make their relationship last in the long run.

Sebastian completed his degree and began a career that often required him to travel abroad.

They continued to explore the world together, sharing a passion for travel that had initially brought them closer.

In 2005, Gianna and Sebastian took an extended trip to Australia, revisiting the beaches of Byron Bay where their story had begun.

“It was just as incredible as I remembered,” says Gianna.

Upon returning to Germany, Gianna discovered she was pregnant.

Both were thrilled at the prospect of starting a family, though while Gianna had always imagined a wedding, Sebastian admits he had never pictured himself getting married.

“I’m not sure why,” he reflects. He was deeply committed to Gianna, but the idea of marriage hadn’t ever appealed to him.

However, a few months before their baby was due, Sebastian suggested a hiking trip together.

“I’m pregnant, I don’t feel like it,” Gianna argued, but Sebastian was insistent, so she gave in. The couple set off for Tegensee, a picturesque town in Bavaria, in the southern part of Germany.

“When we finally reached the summit, he proposed. I made it to the top, but my first reaction was, ‘No way.’ I was completely stunned,” Gianna recalls.

Sebastian explains that his decision to propose came from a deep sense of certainty, a feeling that mirrored his initial impulse when he first met Gianna, or when he decided to visit her in Melbourne.

Sebastian believed that proposing during a hike would make it memorable and adventurous, steering clear of anything too clichéd or expected.

Gianna agreed, and shortly before the birth of their first child, the couple tied the knot in a civil ceremony.

A year later, they marked their union with a celebration in Bali, surrounded by family, with guests traveling from Australia, Germany, and Italy.

Living in the moment

Over the years, the couple has welcomed two more children, and Gianna, who arrived in Germany without knowing any German, is now fluent in the language.

Through their mixed cultures, Sebastian and Gianna have nurtured a sense of open-mindedness and a passion for travel in their children.

A few years back, the family made a temporary move to China due to Sebastian's work assignment.

The couple embraced this new chapter with excitement and commitment. Sebastian believes that their mutual willingness to take risks is a key factor in the success of their relationship.

“We often think alike, which is sometimes uncanny,” he says. “But of course, there are also differences.”

“I’ve embraced everything,” Gianna says. “I’ve never had any issues or negative experiences. I genuinely love my life here. But not a day goes by without calling Mum, reading the Australian news, or longing for the ocean breeze.”

Sebastian agrees that it’s tough having Gianna’s family so far away, especially during the pandemic.

Gianna does wonder whether a return to Australia could be on the horizon, particularly when their children are older – they’re dual citizens and may eventually want to study or work there.

However, both Gianna and Sebastian believe it’s best not to overanalyze or overplan what lies ahead.

This has always been their approach, ever since Gianna first flew to Germany. And it’s been a successful one for them so far.

“We really just took it one day at a time,” says Gianna. “That’s how our relationship unfolded.”

No matter where life takes them, they’re certain they’ll face it together.

“We’re far from being inseparable,” Gianna says. “I’ve always tried to give him the space to pursue his success and happiness. But at the end of the day, we both enjoy the simple pleasure of saying good night to each other.”