Love @ Starbucks In Schiphol

When Austin Mann decided to ask his longtime girlfriend to marry him he knew exactly where he wanted to do it. It was the spot where Esther Havens first started to fall in love with him.

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It was a spot at the Starbucks in the Amsterdam airport.

The path to that moment started almost a decade earlier when they met in 2008 in Waco, Texas. At first, they were just friends with a lot in common. Both Mann and Havens are freelance photographers who do work supporting nonprofit initiatives in developing communities. They travel more than 100,000 miles a year, so airports are their second homes.

A few years after they met, Mann was returning from an assignment in Africa and passing through Schiphol when he realised that Havens would be there just a few days later. On a whim, he left her a note at the Starbucks store there and texted her a riddle to help her track it down. And with that, her feelings of friendship began to turn into something more. “I thought, wow, he put a lot of effort into this,” Havens recalled. “That for me was the start of, ‘Who is this guy? Could I see myself with him?’”

They began dating and, as the scope of their relationship widened, so did the notes. Mann left notes in various Starbucks around the world, keeping track of where he’d put them so if he found out she’d be passing through he could text her clues directing her to them.