photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

From left to right, students Annika Bernau, Ida Frenzel and Lotta Schünemann are pictured outside the Journal-World office on Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2023. They're part of a group of 12 students that have been visiting Lawrence recently as part of an exchange program with one of Lawrence's sister cities — Eutin, Germany.

Like most teenagers, a group of 12 new students attending Lawrence’s high schools have spent the past few weeks going to school sporting events and getting ready for their homecoming dances.

But this is all completely new territory for that group — and so are plenty of other elements of life in an American city. That’s because those students have been visiting Lawrence from their home in Eutin, Germany, as part of the Sister Cities exchange program.

The nonprofit Sister Cities Lawrence facilitates the exchange, which works both ways as students from Lawrence spend time living with host families in Eutin. The Lawrence group, which was made up of six students, spent about a month abroad in Germany earlier this year. Along with Eutin, Lawrence also counts Hiratsuka, Japan, and Iniades, Greece, as sister cities; Iniades is the newest sister city relationship, and the roots between Lawrence and the German and Japanese cities date back decades.

photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

A delegation of students visiting from one of Lawrence’s three sister cities — Eutin, Germany — was recognized at the Lawrence City Commission’s meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023.

Ida Frenzel, Annika Bernau and Lotta Schünemann are three of the German students who have spent the past few weeks here in Lawrence living with host families. The group spoke with the Journal-World soon after they arrived here in late September. It was the first visit to the U.S. for all three of them, and they said their first impression of American life was good.

“I love that everyone was so friendly so far,” Bernau said of an early trip to the grocery store.

That friendliness has extended beyond chats with cashiers at local businesses to the friends each of them had made during their first week in Lawrence, along with host families who have been especially welcoming. All of them agreed that they felt cared for right away; Schünemann said her host parents even went out of their way to accommodate her gluten allergy.

“I got so lucky,” Schünemann said. “I could even say I got the best host family that’s possible in this whole town, I would say this. They’re the best host family you could ever get.”

Those relationships have helped the group navigate the elements of American life that they may not have been expecting, such as what it would be like to attend an American high school. For Frenzel, her expectation was that American students would be louder and that classrooms might be more chaotic in general, but she instead met peers who were much more introverted. Bernau said students of different ages — like freshmen and seniors — are more integrated here compared to in Germany, which was a surprise.

But there have been other expectations that held up. For example, Schünemann said she knew before coming here that sports were “a big topic,” and she was able to quickly see that firsthand by attending high school football and volleyball games.

“Seeing this in real life was pretty cool,” Schünemann said. “I already went with my host family to a (University of Kansas) game. The energy was just like, wow. I didn’t want to leave.”

The group and their parents did have some knowledge of what Kansas was like before arriving here thanks to a crash course from their teacher and chaperone, Philipp Loose, who’s brought multiple groups of German students to visit the U.S. on past exchanges. They learned, for example, about Lawrence’s political standing as a “blue dot” in a red state, and that there isn’t just one Kansas City.

But Loose said the overarching message ahead of the trip was more about the “spirit of the city,” as a place with a large university and student population. Schünemann had friends back home who visited Lawrence during last year’s Eutin exchange, which meant they had plenty of additional suggestions for what to do while she was here.

Nevertheless, there are still some things that are hard to prepare for — like an overwhelming first-time shopping experience at a busy Walmart, Bernau said.

The group will soon leave Lawrence for a visit to New York City before returning home, but visiting the most populous city in the country wasn’t the only thing the group was looking forward to when they spoke with the Journal-World. For Frenzel, the item at the top of that list was simpler — making more memories with her new friends.

“That’s the things I’ve been enjoying the most,” Frenzel said. “I don’t need to go to huge football games or stuff (like that), I just like sitting in the parking lot with my American friends to talk and throwing (a football) or going downtown. I just enjoy the little things.”

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Some people in town may only be familiar with Lawrence’s sister cities because they’re listed on road signs at some of the entrances to Lawrence. But there’s a sizable — and growing — group that knows about those relationships thanks to having taken part in an exchange.

The Eutin exchange, for example, has been going strong for more than three decades and has built up a lengthy list of alumni. Bill Keel, the chair of the nonprofit’s board, said there have been hundreds of student exchanges to date.

“It’s varied, but it’s been well over 500 total high school students from both cities going in both directions over about 33 years now, since 1990,” Keel told the Journal-World.

But the Sister Cities exchange wasn’t immune to the travel restrictions put in place during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and while the Eutin exchange was back in full force last year after a two-year absence, this has been the first year back for the Hiratsuka exchange, which took place earlier this summer.

Before then, Keel said the Lawrence and Eutin delegations made an effort to keep their bond strong while exchanges weren’t possible. That meant plenty of Zoom calls, as well as finding different ways to share culture. Keel said that included sending over a series of articles written by people in Lawrence about various topics, such as the effort to return the sacred prayer rock Iⁿ’zhúje’waxóbe to its rightful home with the Kaw Nation. The articles were translated to German and ran in Eutin’s newspaper.

Ken Albrecht, the nonprofit’s Friends of Eutin liaison, said to have made a full return for both of those long-standing exchanges is great to see. Albrecht’s wife was the first Lawrence teacher to chaperone a group of local students on an exchange trip to Eutin, and he said they’ve been hooked ever since.

“It’s life-changing, is a word that I’d use often,” Albrecht told the Journal-World. “It was life-changing for my wife and I, but (also) for these students.”

For more information about Sister Cities Lawrence, visit the nonprofit’s website.