CNN
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The first time Anthony Sall saw Barbara Olle, he was “starstruck.”
It was the summer of 1969. Anthony was a 28-year-old American college graduate shirking familial expectations to explore the world.
Anthony had rejected his father’s offer of a job in their successful family business to spend the best part of five years traveling.
By 1969, Anthony was nearing the end of his traveling stint, unaware its most life-changing chapter was about to begin.
When Anthony first saw Barbara, she was standing in line at the ferry port in Athens, waiting to board a boat to the Greek island of Mykonos.
“She had a way about her that stood out all by itself, and it was mesmerizing and magnetizing to me immediately,” Anthony tells CNN Travel today.
Barbara grew up in communist East Germany, but escaped to West Germany with her family when she was 10. Later, she attended boarding school in Switzerland.
Barbara’s upbringing gave her an international outlook, and in her early adulthood she enjoyed stints living in Paris and London. In the summer of 1969, she’d just turned 24 and was working her dream job as a flight attendant for Air France.
Flying for a living suited Barbara to a tee.
“Meeting people, being in a different country every trip with my airline friends – on safari in Africa, walking the Champs Elysees in Paris, going to my favorite hairdresser in Frankfurt – I could go on and on,” Barbara tells CNN Travel.
That summer, Barbara and her flight attendant friend Evelyn were making the most of a week off.
“We decided to go to Greece which at the time was very affordable, sunny and warm,” Barbara recalls.
When Anthony spotted Barbara at the ferry port, he was holding a ticket to another island: Hydra. Barbara was clearly heading to Mykonos, so on a whim, Anthony exchanged his ticket to match.
Anthony hoped he could speak with Barbara on the ferry, but it turned out she was traveling in second class, and he was in third. Barriers separated each section.
Not only that, there was apparent competition for Anthony’s affections.
The previous day, Barbara had met a Greek man in Athens, near the Acropolis, and he’d…
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