Day: August 29, 2025

• I met a man in Zurich and instantly knew I was going to marry him.
• However, I didn’t expect we’d tie the knot just six months after knowing one another.
• We lived in Minneapolis together and were married for three years, then we got divorced.

I was 30, a British-South African expat living her best life in Zurich, when I was unexpectedly and entirely swept off my feet by a Swedish knight in shining armour.

The day we met, I knew deep in my bones that my life was about to change forever. We spent an hourslong brunch together, followed by strolling the city with mutual friends he was visiting for the weekend from London.

“I’m going to marry that guy,” I said calmly to myself, back in my apartment at the end of the day. I was right. I just had no idea that the US Homeland Security was going to help make it happen.

Our long-distance love story

What followed were weeks of flirty messages followed by several months of flights back and forth — first between Zurich and London and eventually Minneapolis, where he moved for work. He met my parents in Cape Town, and I met his in Stockholm.

While our global rendezvous were ridiculously romantic, we wanted a normal life together.

So, about five months into our long-distance love story, I decided to quit my job (I’d been wanting to move on for a while) and take a few months out in Minneapolis to see if we were still loved up after spending more than a couple of weeks in the same space.

I said my temporary goodbyes in Zurich, locked up my apartment, and the knight and I jumped on a plane together, bound for Minneapolis.

The event that changed my life

We were giddy with excitement in the immigration line at the airport, where I’d been many times before. However, this time, when I handed over my passport and enthusiastically told the immigration officer I was here to stay with my boyfriend for a while, things took a turn.

I was quickly shuffled into a secondary area for further questioning. At this point, I wasn’t panicking. I’d done nothing wrong. I had a return flight within the 90-day limit, and didn’t need a visitor visa as a British citizen. I had a sister in Florida, and had visited her countless times for long periods. I’d never had any issues.

This time, though, US Homeland Security wasn’t so sure. When my luggage and laptop were taken from me to be searched — that’s when I started to panic.

Two hours and some serious interrogation later, the immigration officer (let’s call her Cindy) who was interrogating me told me she would not be allowing me into the US that day. I didn’t get a specific reason. Perhaps it was because I no longer had a job back in Zurich, or was entering via a different city this time. I’ll never know.

I was fingerprinted, gave a statement, had a couple of minutes to say a shaky goodbye to the knight, and was promptly marched back onto the plane I arrived on, headed back to Zurich.

I was shocked, angry, and exhausted. A couple of hours into the flight, the chief purser handed me back my passport, which had been kept from me until we cleared US airspace. He said I shouldn’t feel too bad since people are denied US entry “more often than you think.” I finally burst into tears.

Starbucks lovers

A week later, the knight was back in Zurich with me. His boss, who knew about what happened, had allowed him to work from Zurich for as long as needed and even gave us access to top immigration lawyers. Their advice? Get married. It would be our best shot at resolving this.

So, over coffee on a Sunday morning in Starbucks, we decided to do just that. It wasn’t the stuff of fairytale proposals, but we chose to see the whole drama as divine intervention. The Universe did not want us to wait to be together forever. I couldn’t help think, “Thank you, Cindy!”

We got married within weeks, with two city hall employees we’d never met as witnesses. Shortly thereafter, immigration lawyers helped me obtain a spousal visa, and my new husband and I planned our trip back to the US.

Life in the US

Arriving in the US with my shiny new visa and husband, I was warmly welcomed compared to the last time.

It took me a while to settle into Minneapolis, but after a few months, I started to find my groove.

I met some nice people and bought the most hardcore winter gear I’d ever owned (and I’ve lived in Alp land). I took long walks around beautiful lakes (and across frozen ones in winter, which blew my mind) and found the best cinnamon buns I’d ever tasted. I joined the American Swedish Institute, learned to like ice hockey, discovered the surprising delight of summer in Minneapolis, and had my first real Fourth of July experience on a boat on Lake Minnetonka.

It wasn’t New York, Los Angeles, or some of the more glamorous US destinations, but Minneapolis felt real, and I liked it.

Trouble in paradise

The knight and I had a great life, for a while.

However, as the high of our whirlwind romance and the novelty of being together in a new place began to wear off, real life set in. It turned out that we were more into the fairytale versions of one another and marriage than reality.

It’s no surprise that giving up your happy life for someone (no matter how smitten you both are) puts a ton of pressure on a relationship. Immigration drama, getting married, moving overseas — all within six months of meeting — is a lot.

Almost three years to the day after we got married, we got divorced. It was amicable, but still sad. Would things have been different if we hadn’t gotten married so quickly? If we’d stayed in Europe? Or if we’d met later in life? I’ve mostly made peace with not knowing those answers.

I have a great dinner-party story now

Many years later, I can look back and laugh about my experience. It’s certainly an entertaining story. However, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the experience changed my life forever.

It led to my marriage and divorce — two pretty big life events that will always be part of my story and that I’d never want to erase.

Sadly, losing my marriage also meant losing my spousal visa and ability to live in the US. And since I’ve been denied entry into the US, I can no longer use the Visa Waiver Program, as I’d always done to visit my family.

It’s been 16 years since I visited my sister, nieces, and nephew in the US, and 17 years since Cindy unknowingly changed my life forever. I tried once to get a visitor visa two years after my divorce, and it was denied. Perhaps it’s time to try again.

• A drone company in Lithuania said it purposefully buys parts made in Ukraine.
• Granta Autonomy’s CEO said some products have only been innovated in Ukraine.
• He said his company wants to help Ukraine but also be ready in case Russia attacks Europe.

A Lithuanian drone maker is eagerly turning to Ukraine for parts. Its CEO says the war has sparked battlefield innovations, that the Ukrainians are producing at scale, and that local sourcing is practical for his company’s needs.

Gediminas Guoba, the CEO of Granta Autonomy, said some of his company’s drone technology uses Ukrainian parts because they offer combat-tested capabilities. “They were adapted or they were invented on the battlefield and are available in Ukraine only,” he explained to Business Insider.

Granta Autonomy isn’t alone in working with Ukraine. A growing number of Western companies are starting to open production sites in Ukraine and working with the Ukrainian firms to learn.

But buying parts from Ukrainian manufacturers is less common.

Given the quickly changing battlefield and the fast-moving drone development race between Russia and Ukraine, Ukrainian companies are often at the forefront of new technology.

Guoba said Ukrainian firms “have experience and they have products which are needed now, not in a year or something.” He said Ukrainian companies have access to the battlefields, “they have experience of what is going on there, so it really helps.”

He said some of the parts he gets from Ukraine were invented or adapted specifically for the war and while versions of that technology may exist abroad, they aren’t built in a way that meets the needs of modern drones and the challenges of modern warfare.

One example he gave was antenna masts, which connect drones to their operators. While this kind of technology has long existed, Guoba said most models were designed for larger systems, were hard to move, or didn’t work well under tree cover — conditions where Ukrainian troops often operate to avoid detection by Russian drones.

He also pointed to explosion initiators made in Ukraine. Similar products exist elsewhere, he said, but they aren’t designed for drones or produced at the scale Ukraine is now achieving.

Some Ukrainian-made military-grade components cannot legally be exported, so Granta assembles them inside Ukraine. Similar restrictions exist in Western countries too — meaning parts from, say, Germany, can also be hard to acquire.

Granta Autonomy moved some of its processes inside the country. Granta builds most of its drones abroad, but when they need Ukrainian-made parts, those drones are finished and integrated inside Ukraine — and then stay with Ukraine’s forces.

Getting direct experience from Ukraine

Guoba said that he and his team regularly visit Ukraine because “there are really a lot of things we need to learn.” He said he visits the battlefield himself “just to understand how it really works.”

He said his motivations are to help Ukraine and to help his country develop technology that may be needed against Russia. Lithuania, a NATO member, is closely monitoring the war in Ukraine as one of the many European countries worried that Russia could expand its aggression and trigger a NATO-wide conflict.

Guoba said going to the fight is “a completely different experience being or working here and just getting feedback from operators.” The company only considers something a product if it’s been battlefield-tested in Ukraine. “Until then, it’s just like an idea; it’s a prototype,” he said.

His company supplies drones designed to work even when radio frequencies and GPS are jammed. He says that it has already delivered 1,000 of its GA-10FPV-AI quadcopters to Ukraine and signed contracts for nearly 4,000 more, along with more than 2,300 for Lithuania’s military. Ukraine also deploys Granta’s Hornet XR drone.

Many Western companies and defense officials see great value in having their products in Ukraine so they can be tested in combat. Luke Pollard, the UK’s armed forces minister, said in May: “If you are a drone company and you do not have your kit on the front line in Ukraine, you might as well give up.”

Many companies that have products in this fight receive valuable information directly from soldiers using their equipment, sometimes texting and FaceTiming with soldiers to get their feedback.

Ukrainian companies have knowledge

Ukraine’s defense industry has boomed under the intense and unrelenting pressure of Russia’s full-scale invasion, rapidly producing not just alternatives for the scarce Western systems it can’t get enough of but also new technologies tailored to the war.

Troels Lund Poulsen, the defense minister of NATO ally Denmark, told Business Insider in February that he wants Danish defense companies to work with and learn from firms in Ukraine so that they can “get some of the lessons learned from the defense companies in Ukraine back to Danish defense companies.”

“I think we have a lot to learn from Ukraine,” he said.

Guoba said that knowledge is also key for Europe as it looks to reduce its reliance on China.

He said he sees it as his “duty” to have components developed for Europe “as close to our home as possible.”

Within the West, as in Ukraine, there’s an effort to avoid buying Chinese drones and parts. China dominates that market, but the risks in using a potential adversary’s tech raise concerns. Ukraine relied heavily on Chinese drone technology early in the war, but it has been steadily working to decrease its dependence. Most drones are domestically produced, but some parts are still imported.

Guoba said there have been positive movement within Europe, such as in motor development, but “there are still limitations,” at least for now.