In the past, Meike Giessler couldn’t imagine ever having a relationship in English. Now the 24-year-old influencer from western Germany is dating a Dane.
Over breakfast at Sonny Cafe in Frederiksberg, she tells me how she experienced dating in Copenhagen and how she met her boyfriend, with whom she lives just a few streets away.
Since she was a child, Giessler loved Denmark, traveling to a summer house with her parents year after year. “When I grow up, I’ll marry a Dane,” she even told her parents.
In the summer of 2022, she felt stuck in her life in Germany. Studying to be a teacher didn’t feel right for her anymore, and neither did her old relationship. She escaped to Copenhagen for a few months to complete an internship with a photographer. Today she photographs for a living and Copenhagen is her home.
But it took a while before it felt like that. In the beginning, she only lived temporarily in Airbnbs, was frequently in Germany and never officially registered in Denmark.
She spent the winter traveling, unsure whether she even wanted to return to Copenhagen. But then, while traveling Bali, she missed the city so much that she decided to come back in spring 2023.
The mentality in Denmark is different than in Germany – more positive and slower. “I just love this hygge life,” she says.
She adds that people are more positive and generally happier, and there is less pressure to perform. At home, everyone is always complaining. Still, the only thing Giessler misses in Germany is her family and friends.
She found it difficult to make new friendships at first. She tried a dating app for friends and even went clubbing alone. She was nervous at first, but that’s how she finally met her best friend here.
Nevertheless, Giessler lacks deep friendships in her mother tongue. In her experience, Danes are very open at the beginning, but it takes ages to build up real friendships. In addition she struggled with her language skills in the beginning, not only Danish but also English.
“I used to think that Denmark was never an option for me because my English was so bad,” Giessler says. But her English skills developed fast, talking to so many people that she gained confidence and her everyday English became really good.
Language was generally a big topic for Giessler, especially when she started going on dates.
“Whenever I said that I was from Germany, the other person made fun of the German language,” she recalls.
Yet German and Danish are very similar, at least in terms of grammar, while the pronunciation is different. Giessler says she has now found the motivation to learn Danish thanks to her Danish boyfriend, and will soon start a proper language course.
She met her Danish boyfriend, Aske Flensted, in March 2023, a week after her return from Bali. They got to know each other via a dating app and met up for a homemade dinner.
Giessler loves cooking and shares her dishes on TikTok. She says her dream is to publish her own cookbook: Cooking with a taste of hygge, she would name it.
When Giessler first came to Copenhagen in the summer of 2022, it was her first experience of dating, as she had always been in a relationship before.
Some experiences were funny, some of them frustrating. Her date with Flensted did not initially lead to a relationship either. Still, she started telling her TikTok followers about her “Danish crush”.
Many of her followers have been following their story from the beginning. She thinks the community they have built up is particularly great. “People recognize us everywhere on the street, be it in Australia, the Philippines and of course in Germany,” she says.
Giessler had already worked as a content creator back in Germany. However, her focus was different at that time, centering mainly on fitness. The influencer market in Germany is completely different, she says -much bigger.
She hardly uses her main Instagram account anymore, instead sharing her life with Flensted on a joint Instagram account called @askeandmeiki.
“I’m so grateful that he wanted to do it. If he hadn’t wanted me to post him, I would of course not do it,” she says.
Their account grew extremely quickly, and currently sits at 29,600 followers. Giessler’s old account achieved over 100,000 followers, but that took much longer, she says. Her TikTok, where she posts daily, has 142,000 followers.
Giessler and Flensted have recently started earning money with social media and the first collaborations with customers are just starting.
Giessler and Flensted now live together in Frederiksberg and Copenhagen feels more and more like her home.
“This city is such a dream, I love to go swimming and cycling here,” she says. Nevertheless, she notices differences. Even though Flensted has integrated her into his family and takes her everywhere with him, she realizes that he has always lived in Copenhagen and knows a lot more people. “It’s not my home town, it takes much longer to feel that way,” she says.
But Giessler wants to stay: “I can see my children growing up here much more than in Germany, so when I think about it now and in the future, I would like to stay here forever.”
She and Flensted are currently thinking about what to do next. The next step for Giessler is to deregister from Germany and officially register in Denmark.
“I’m so looking forward to this letter!” she says. It will be one step further for her, towards Copenhagen eventually feeling like her hometown.
