We recently shared a story about several Ogeechee Technical College students studying abroad in an exchange program in Germany. Read more about instructor Matthew Gainous's experience here.
I’ve never liked Savannah more than I did Sunday morning, May 7th, at 12:30, a.m. That was when I stepped off the plane that brought me home to Georgia from Newark, New Jersey, where I’d been for five hours after my plane from Frankfurt, Germany, landed Saturday afternoon. I spent Sunday catching up on sleep and soaking up all the home front news from the people I’d missed with every fiber of my being after being gone for a week as well as sharing my experiences with them.
My week in Dortmund, Germany, was jam-packed with activities both cultural and educational. Sunday was a “settling in” day, decompressing from the overnight flight before meeting up with the OTC students for dinner with our hosts. The rest of the week was a whirlwind of schools and businesses, history, and people, the combination of which has enriched my life in ways I’ll not soon forget.
The German model of technical education is very different from ours. One way is in the school structure itself. For instance, the college where my German counterpart Susanne teaches offers only five programs, all related to industrial-style careers in mechanics and manufacturing. There is another college right next door, however, that offers programs related to medical and business fields. It’s confusing to outsiders, but it works extremely well and produces students who are highly trained and well equipped to begin full careers in their fields.
The coolest business I visited was a Mercedes Benz dealership. This was no franchise, though; this was the real deal company directly connected with the Mercedes main production facility in Stuttgart, Germany. I got to see the finest examples of German automotive engineering including cars and SUVs that sold for more than $500,000! I sipped cappuccinos as we waited for the company guide and our OTC student to show us around the facility. Seeing these high-end luxury vehicles was impressive, but not nearly as impressive as learning that James, the OTC automotive student shadowing there, was the first American to ever work at that particular dealership, and that they were so impressed with his work and work ethic they wanted to hire him if he’d come back to Germany with a more solid command of the language. Learning this made the entire trip worthwhile.
At one time, Dortmund was a coalmining town, one of the central producers of coal and steel for the German military during World War II. As such, it was bombed heavily during the war and was almost wiped off the map. There was debate after the war whether or not to rebuild the town, it was so decimated. Evidence of this was uncovered not too far from my hotel when construction workers unearthed an unexploded WWII bomb Thursday afternoon! My hosts said this was not uncommon considering how many bombs were dropped on Dortmund during the war. How wild is that?!
I visited the ruins of a castle and fort that was first built in 725 A.D. I saw monuments honoring Keiser Wilhelm I and Count Bismarck, the German Chancellor credited with establishing what we know as Social Security. In Soest, a small village not far from Dortmund, I visited a pub that was once a brewery established by monks in 1272! I visited a coal-mining factory and a prison, both now museums. I saw Dortmund’s football stadium, home of the BVB Borussia-Dortmund professional soccer team. While I didn’t get to attend a match during my visit, our students did and said it was INSANE! Every seat in the 80,000-capacity stadium was occupied with cheering fans. Germans take their football as seriously as we do!
The places wouldn’t be what they are without the people who live there, and I met some really cool people. My hosts from the Leopold-Hoesch Berufskolleg were wonderful, treating me with nothing but respect and professionalism. I could spend hours talking about them alone, but I want to talk about their students. I met some fascinating young men and women, many German natives, but most refugees who fled to Germany to escape war and violence in their home countries. They were captivated by us Americans, but truly, it was our honor to meet them.
I’ll never downgrade the struggles some of my students face in their personal lives; they are real, and they are hard. Honestly, though, they are inconveniences compared to the burdens some of the refugee students bring to their classes. One student, a 17-year-old Ukrainian boy, hasn’t seen his family in almost two years and doesn’t even know if they are still alive. He, and others like him, are learning German and English simultaneously as they try to assimilate into a new culture while holding on to their cultural heritages at the same time. They were embarrassed to speak English in front of me, but they needn’t have been. I was amazed at their linguistic accomplishments and told them so. They were happy to meet me, but I was humbled to meet them.
I could talk more about my trip, and I probably will, but I’m still trying to absorb all I saw and did in that week. Trips like this one remind me that, while we are different in many ways with others around the world, in just as many ways we are very much alike. Those similarities made home feel not quite so far away.
