The first time I met Sylvi I was pretty intimidated to say the least: I had just arrived on a boat in the Maldives after a 18 hour-long journey, where I had been invited by my friend and photographer Swilly, together with a great crew: Dave Rasta, Asher Pacey, Bryce Young, Lauren Hill, Ellis Ericson and Nic Jones… I was tired, jetlagged and must have looked terribly bad, and there she was, this Hungarian top model, looking impeccable, traveling around the world with her own avocados and Himalayan salt & pepper, and having her perfect surfboard quiver all ready to go perfectly laid out over the front of the boat. With a serious look she approached me, holding in one hand a water bottle, in the other a thick black marker pen: “Here is your water, write your name on the bottle now so it won’t get mixed up, we all share a fridge”. Tired as I was I wrote my name on the bottle as big as I could. Shortly after this I went to sit down outside with all the others, just to find out that I was the only one with her name on the bottle and at every sip, I had a massive “JANNI” right in my face. Surrounded by all these super stylish cool surfer dudes I definitely got some funny looks and smiles, they must have thought I’m a stereotypical German chick that marks her water bottles and sets alarms to be the first putting her towel on beach chairs before the sun comes up… Thanks Sylvi! 😉 But soon that initial freeze melted and every day we became closer and closer, and we ended up being best friends. I think I had never laughed as much as in those two weeks and it was so cool to surf together…