What began as a bridge between Ansbach, Germany and Bay City six decades ago is connecting people once again.
The Sister City Project with Ansbach, Germany started in 1961 and recently saw two student exchanges that not only sparked lifelong relationships but also gave the friends a new perspective on the life and culture of each other’s communities.
One of the people affected was Olivia Maurer, a graduate of
Bay City Western High School and the Marketing and Management program at the
Bay-Arenac ISD Career Center.
Maurer says she’d already graduated high school when she packed up and left for Germany last summer.
“It seems kind of scary when you don’t speak their language,” she says, but that fear was quickly dispelled. She learned many people in Germany spoke English, “which was weird to me because I didn’t expect that. It taught me to navigate language barriers.”
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Photo courtesy of Bay City governmentDuring a 2022 visit, a flag was hung in the Ansbach business district commemorating the relationship.The trip helped her discover new options for herself.
“I was deciding if I wanted to go to college or not,” she says, and she realized the reason she wanted to head off to school was just to leave Bay City. “I decided that wasn’t a good reason to go to college and I should focus more on my learning and stuff instead of just wanting a new atmosphere.”
When she returned home, she opted to stay here and keep exploring her next steps. One of those steps was inviting her host student, Mona, to Michigan in September.
Bay City Central High School German Instructor Susan Elder says the bonds between the students and their families created lifelong friendships and a “global citizen mindset.”
Like Maurer all of the students participating had their perspectives altered in a good way.
“When we experience life through another person's perspective, we begin to realize that we are more alike than different and that our choices can affect others in a profound way. Living in a family, going to school, and navigating a city in another country changes the brain and expands perspective.”
Elder is one of the educators working to expand the intercultural exchange.
Over the last 60 years, she says the Sister-City Program waxed and waned. Today, she thinks people see the benefits of the relationship.
“I believe the relationship between the two sister cities is important in connecting our city to its past while creating opportunities for educational and economic development in the future.”
Christian Krug, one of the educators from Ansbach, Germany, also sees benefits for his community.
“Teaching or learning a foreign language outside an English-speaking country is an artificial situation, and the exchange provides a unique chance to apply language skills in a real-world context. Additionally, teaching languages is about more than just language skills; it's also about understanding people and cultures.”
He also noted that the differences in culture were prominent between the two student groups.
“The evolution of Franconian/German culture and its heritage,” was especially apparent in Frankenmuth. There, Krug and his students saw how German traditions evolved when people immigrated to Michigan.
“It’s good to have friends on the other side of the Atlantic,” he adds.
A changed perspective is also what Maia Alman got out of the exchange. Rather than differences, the Central High School students saw similarities between the two groups.
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Photo courtesy of Bay City governmentWhen Bay City officials visited Ansbach in 2022, the German city named one of its bridges for Bay City. “It made me realize how similar, but unique, both of our country's cultures are,” Alman says.
Like Maurer, Alman says she went into the experience not knowing the language as well as she’d have liked.
“I think that the exchange has really helped in my communication skills. Getting to know and talk to people who don't speak the same language was a challenge, but it had definitely helped with communicating with others, which I think will really benefit my future endeavors.”
That lesson, along with the friendships she developed, changed her perspective.
“I think the trip helped with my global perspective,” and created lifelong connections. “Our families were able to make a great connection and we still keep in touch now.”
Another of the educators involved in the program Lisa Forrest, Marketing and Management Instructor at the BAISD Career Center, says she believes the program will help with much more than building friendships.
“The importance to the students in Bay City and Ansbach is the positive impact of a true human connection in sharing common life experiences,” Forrest says.
She sees the students involved as well as the community as a whole growing through the experiences by working toward finding solutions to global workforce and trade issues.
“The students are also networking and gaining confidence in communication and collaboration,” she says. “The future of the Sister City collaboration and our friendship is in the youth building personal relationships. In short, personal relationships encourage us to be empathetic and understanding, lead to productive problem-solving skills, and reduce conflict worldwide.”
BAISD Career Center Assistant Principal Kathy Dardas agrees and supports the program wholeheartedly. She sees the exchanges as not only opportunities to connect the students across the Atlantic, but the greater Bay City community also.
“When we had the group here in September, when we would go out into the community – if it was maybe going to have coffee after school or going to dinner – we were hearing about the connections that our community has to Ansbach and to Germany.”
Community organizations such as Rotary Club, the Bay Area Chamber of Commerce, City of Bay City, and Michigan Sugar all connected with the program.
“It’s that piece of it that is really the bigger picture,” she says.
Dardas says she wants to see the program grow, and she wants to see more people get involved.
“We would really want them to take away the understanding that there are opportunities for students right here in our Great Lakes Bay Region that connect them across the world. And that piece of that is both in business and industry that we can do that through learning about each other and connecting virtually.”
Through the exchange, German students spend about two weeks in Bay City in the fall, staying with host families in the area. Anyone interested in hosting a student can contact Dardas at the BAISD at
dardask@baisd.net.
To learn more about the cultural exchange and how to participate, ask to join the private
Facebook page.