Alex Nelke and Ola Forsmark will never forget that evening together in Thailand.
Eyes meeting across the dance floor. Drinking on the beach side by side. Trying to climb a mountain in the middle of the night. Swimming in the dark. Laughing together as they run across the sandy beaches.
“I remember thinking he was a very special person from the moment I met him,” Alex says CNN Travel today. “You know when you meet someone and you’re just on the same level? It was so easy to talk to Ola. It just felt super good.”
“When I saw Alex, I was blown away,” Ola tells CNN Travel. “I fell in love with her the moment we met. She was always such a special person to me, ever since that first night.”
After that, for more than 15 years, Alex and Ola were out of touch, living separate lives, happily in relationships with other people. They rarely thought of each other. When they did, it was with a warm nostalgia for a night they would never forget, but which they had firmly relegated to the past.
In 2020, Alex and Ola were both single. And an unexpected message out of the blue stirred feelings and heralded a surprising second chapter.
An unforgettable evening
Alex and Ola’s paths first crossed when they were in their mid-twenties and both visiting the island of Ko Phi Phi in Thailand. The island is known for its white sand beaches and striking limestone cliffs, all surrounded by crystal clear blue waters.
It was 2004. Alex, originally from Germany, had just quit her job in fashion PR in London to travel the world with her best friend. Meanwhile, Ola was a Swedish engineering student spontaneously exploring Southeast Asia. Alex and Ola met in a crowded bar and spent the night together on the island.
“We were only supposed to be together for one night, because I was leaving Ko Phi Phi the next morning,” Alex recalls. They didn’t even exchange contact details.
But then Alex and her friend missed their morning ferry. Realizing that the next boat wasn’t until the next day, the two women headed back to their hostel. They were walking down the street when they ran into Ola. Alex remembers Ola’s big smile when he unexpectedly saw her again.
“It was really lucky that Alex missed the ferry,” Ola says now.
Alex and Ola made plans to hang out again that evening and visit a few bars and beaches before Alex and her friend successfully caught the ferry the next day.
This time Alex made sure to give Ola her email address. The two travelers promised to stay in touch. There was even talk of Ola and Alex meeting again later in Bali.
“But that didn’t happen,” says Alex.
“We ran out of money, so we never came to Bali,” Ola explains.
Instead, Alex and Ola stayed in touch over the next few months via email and instant messenger, updating each other on their adventures.
“We emailed pretty much every day,” Alex recalls. “We were in touch a lot during our travels in Southeast Asia. Then I went to America for another three months and Ola went back to Sweden, but we just kept emailing and kept in touch.”
When Alex returned to London in the winter of 2004, Ola immediately booked a plane ticket to visit her.
“He came for a long weekend with one of his best friends,” Alex recalls. “But nothing really came of it.”
Both Alex and Ola came back from their reunion in London a little disappointed. Their connection in Thailand felt special and they both looked forward to each other’s emails. The idea that they had no future felt bittersweet.
“I just don’t think it’s the right time yet,” Alex concluded.
As for Ola, he felt like a relationship with Alex was out of reach – despite his feelings for her.
“Like I said, I was in love with Alex from the moment I first saw her, and I thought she was an amazing person and a beautiful woman,” Ola says. “But I also thought she was so cool, so beautiful, living in another city far away from me — it was a bit out of reach for me.”
Despite the bittersweet visit to London, Alex and Ola remained on good terms and kept up with their emails. When Facebook became popular, they got in touch there.
“But then life happened,” Ola says. “We had less and less contact, spoke less and less…”
Eventually, the emails died down. Alex started dating a man in London. Then Ola met someone else, got married, and had kids. They stayed in touch on social media, but never interacted online. Alex didn’t even know Ola was married—he didn’t post much, and he wasn’t on her radar anymore.
For more than ten years, Alex and Ola placed themselves firmly in the past: a fond memory of their travels when they were twenty, but nothing more.
One day, out of the blue, Alex sent Ola a message.
Reconnecting on Social Media
It was July 2020. London was just coming out of its first Covid lockdown. There wasn’t much to do other than scroll through social media, so when Alex saw on Facebook that it was Ola’s birthday, she decided to send him a friendly message.
She had been single for the past few years but she didn’t know what Ola’s relationship status was. She didn’t have romance in mind when she contacted him.
“What made me do it: I have no idea,” Alex says of the moment she sent the message. “I think it was the Facebook gods. I think it happened the night of his birthday or the day after, I was on Facebook and I saw people writing happy birthday on his profile. So I messaged him to say, ‘Happy Birthday.’”
When the message popped up on Ola’s phone, he couldn’t believe it. As luck would have it, he was recently divorced and just starting to think about dating again.
“I got super nervous,” he recalls. “I didn’t know how or even if I should respond. I was like, ‘Why is Alex texting me?’ I was so nervous and so excited at the same time, because I had so many feelings about the meeting in Thailand.”
Ola told himself not to think about it too much and wrote a kind reply back.
“And then we started chatting,” he recalls.
To their mutual surprise, the connection Alex and Ola felt that night on the beach in Ko Phi Phi came back instantly. It was simultaneously as if no time had passed and as if the timing was finally right. Alex and Ola started talking early on about how they could meet again in person.
“Four weeks later we met in Berlin,” Alex recalls.
Reunification in Berlin
Alex and Ola reunited in the lobby of a hotel in Berlin.
“I arrived, saw him and didn’t really know whether to check in first or run straight into his arms. As a German, I decided I had to check in quickly,” Alex says, laughing. “The reunion felt so natural — super exciting, but so natural.”
“It was so strange and so exciting,” Ola says of the moment he saw Alex again after almost twenty years.
The two spent the weekend strolling through the city’s parks, dining outside and catching up on their time apart.
“We clicked straight away and had a great weekend,” says Alex.
After years of being together, dealing with heartbreak and failed relationships, Alex and Ola decided they no longer wanted to postpone their happiness.
“We decided very quickly that we wanted to be together,” Alex says. “We thought, ‘Life is too short.’”
And so Alex and Ola spent the rest of the summer of 2020 visiting each other every four or five weeks, visiting each other in London and Sweden, as Covid rules allowed.
In the fall, Alex met Ola’s children, with whom she immediately fell in love.
Within six months of reconnecting with Ola, Alex packed up her London apartment and moved her life – including her beloved dog, Wolfgang – permanently to Sweden.
“It happened really fast, but it felt right,” Alex says. “I’ve always thought Ola was such a special person. And I’ve always had a really special feeling about him. And I just thought, ‘If not now, when?'”
“I was so in love,” Ola says of the decision to invite Alex to move in. “I’m quite a romantic person, I didn’t even think about what would happen if it didn’t work out. I just wanted to be with Alex as soon as possible.”
While Ola and Alex were caught up in the excitement of their renewed romance, Ola also wanted to make sure his children and ex-wife were comfortable.
“I thought everything through, with the children,” says Ola. “I tried to organize everything well for everyone.”
Alex soon came to regard Ola’s children as her “sweet bonus children”.
The blended family gets along very well.
“When you see him with his children, he is so loving and sweet,” Alex adds.
Life today
A year after moving to Sweden, Alex and Ola bought a house together in Malmö, Sweden. Three years later, the couple still lives there happily.
Alex runs a dog training company and Ola is a teacher.
For Alex, it was an easy decision to move to Sweden to be with Ola and she has never regretted it, although she sometimes misses her old life in London.
“But when I get a little down about it, I just think about how we met and how lucky we are to have ended up together. And how amazing and random and romantic this all is and then I feel really good about it,” she says.
Last July, Alex and Ola celebrated four years of reconnecting.
“When I think about our first meeting, I get a little scared, almost, because it was such a lucky thing,” says Ola. “We saw each other on the dance floor, then we had a nice evening together. But we didn’t exchange contact details or anything like that. It was luck that Alex missed her ferry, and then everything happened.”
“The universe definitely wanted us to meet,” Alex adds. “I mean, the universe gave us two really good chances. It’s funny to think that we have a 20-year history — and then we don’t.”
In Alex and Ola’s house in Malmö, they have a picture frame – “one of those transparent frames where you can put two pictures in,” as Alex puts it.
On one side is their first photo together – the only one from their meeting in Thailand in 2004: a slightly drunk, laughing photo of the two in their twenties – a photo they long thought would be their only photo together.
On the other side is a photo taken recently, showing forty-somethings Alex and Ola, arms around each other, smiling at the camera.
“One is from 20 years ago and one is from now. So we switch them up every now and then, which is fun,” Alex says. “Our relationship still feels pretty much the same as it did in 2004, but better — because we really know each other now.”
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