My name is Marianne Horsch, I’m born in Germany on March 29, 1982. The first 11 years of my life I’ve lived in Germany, but I always went to a Dutch school. In 1993 we moved to the Netherlands where I finished primary school and I went to secundairy school. When I was 18 I moved to Amsterdam to study business mathematics and information science at the university.
After finishing my study I started working as a software engineer, most of the time I’ve built internet and intranet applications using Oracle ADF. I bought a house and started to live a bit of a normal life. Working 40 hours a week (at least), having a house and a car.
1 year after I started working I met Sander. I fell in love but it took me 3 years to make him see there’s no way to get rid of me. He finally gave up fighting and decided that if he cannot get rid of me, he should take me with him on his around the world trip (something he already wanted to do for many years).
At first I did not have a motorcycle driving license, but after a few times on the pillion of Sander’s motorbike I decided I would love to be able to drive one on my own. So I took some driving lessons. Which went pretty well, as I passed the exams in 1 try (unlike my car driving license, which took me 4 times to pass). The next step was to buy myself a motorbike. I bought a Suzuki Bandit for several reasons, it was lowered, it had 4 cylinders so it drove really smooth and (best of all) it was blue, my favorite color!
It also turned out to be a really heavy motorbike, I never really thought about its weight but once I dropped it, I realized how heavy it actually is.
At first we only did some day and weekend trips. My first big trip was in the summer of 2011. We jumped on our motorbikes and drove from the Netherlands through Germany, Denmark and Sweden all the way up to Cape North and back down through Norway. I enjoyed this first trip so much, that I can’t wait to start the big trip around the world!
