A long lost brother and sister have been reunited after accidentally discovering each other via a dating app.
Erik de Vries and Josephine Egberts, from the Dutch city of Breda, lost touch in 1999 when their parents divorced. De Vries and his twin brother Maarten moved to Belgium with their father, while Josephine and her mother stayed in Breda. Erik and Maarten attempted to locate his sister after a period but could not find her.
Years later, according to a report in NL Times, Erik returned to Holland to study. When he later downloaded and ran the popular dating app Tinder, he was matched with a woman and began conversing with her.
Erik, now 24, told Mic.com:
“The first time I swiped her profile I had absolutely no idea.”
But he soon began to notice similarities, the student continued:
“I began to wonder to myself, ‘it can’t be that I just had a Tinder match with my sister?’ “
After his initial shock, Erik asked the woman about her childhood, quickly confirming her identity.
The siblings were reunited a week later at a café in Tilburg, close to their native Breda in southern Holland.
Josephine, now 22, told NL Times that she had immediately recognised her brother at the meeting.
“It was so special to see my own blood brother again after 16 years.”
Josephine and Erik now plan to stay in touch.
Image of Breda by Ralf Roletschek via Wikipedia under a GNU Free Documentation licence
