By Ulrike Wronski, DPA
Kiel (Germany) : sand and the pangs of love are just some of the emotions people experience while on holiday. Going on an extended trip is a great way to get to know a boy or fall in love with a girl. But there’s no guarantee that the holiday will have a happy end.
One extreme example of what can go wrong is the story of Marco, a teenager from Uelzen in Germany, who is currently in police custody in Turkey charged with sexually abusing a 13-year-old English girl.
But holiday relationship problems are usually of a much simpler nature. After a few days of excitement, the couple are all too soon forced to separate.
Flirting on holiday and falling in love are fine as along as they last, but painful when it comes to the break-up.
It’s easy to fall in love when the stress that comes with going to school dissipates and the routine of daily life is far away.
People tend to be more relaxed on holiday than they are at home and their good mood reflects that feeling.
“The new situation is exciting, everything is a little bit freer and you don’t feel the limits that life imposes on you so much,” says Ute Wiese-Hast, a Goettingen-based sociologist.
Wiese-Hast gives advice to lovesick teenagers through a website run by Pro-Familia, an organisation that provides information on sexual and reproductive health matters.
“Going on holiday is a good excuse to have a flirt as long as you don’t already have a boy or girlfriend.” This is Andrea’s attitude to going on holiday.
But three years ago it was a different story. Andrea was 16-years-old at the time and fell in love with Michael from Saxony while on a skiing break.
After the holiday ended, Andrea and Michael spent the next six months talking to each other on the phone every evening. Then, suddenly, contact stopped. Another six months passed and Michael called again.
“After that we visited each other every weekend and then spent time together during the holidays,” she said.
But half a year later, their long distance relationship ended.
Physical separation is a huge problem for people who fall for someone when away from home.
Without a car and hardly any money, it’s difficult to overcome that distance, says Wiese-Hast. Phone calls and emails are simply not the same as meeting in person.
Communicating via a mobile phone brings its own problems, as the story of Melanie from Kiel in northern Germany illustrates. The 15-year-old was holidaying with her parents when she was smitten by a Dane.
The relationship lasted just one day. “We exchanged numbers but somehow it just didn’t work out. I probably had the wrong dialling code,” she says.
“After saying goodbye to your holiday love everything seems boring and stupid,” says Wiese-Hast, describing the initial mood many teenagers feel on returning home.
Being lovesick is always a painful experience but it helps to talk to other people about it, including parents as they might be able to help with a reunion.
The next summer holidays are sure to come around again as well. “We’ve had couples who got to know each other on one of our trips and the next year went on holiday together again,” says Christoph Edlinger from RUF Jugendreisen, a Bielefeld-based tour operator that specialises in holidays for teenagers.
But sometimes a holiday flirt can develop into something a lot bigger.
Anja met Thomas in the mid 1990s on a campsite in Hungary. “We spent a week together, then he had to return home,” remembers Anja.
But just a short time later he came back for a few days. A long distance relationship over 270 km but they kept in touch. Ten months ago they tied the knot.