‘My American sister’: German exchange students talk about Belleville visit

Anna Fee Wefelmeier will miss the free drink refills and Niklas Becker will miss cruising in cars and listening to music.

And they both will miss their friends and host families.

Wefelmeier, 17, and Becker, 18, are two of the 12 German exchange students spending three weeks this summer in Belleville as part of the Sister Cities program with Paderborn, Germany. They took trips to Six Flags, Springfield and Chicago. The group will return to Germany on Tuesday.

Wefelmeier’s host student is Lucy Eckert, the daughter of Belleville Mayor Mark Eckert. “She’s like my American sister, I’m going to miss her the most,” Wefelmeier said.

Becker said he and his host student, Dale Deitz, had a lot fun when they went out driving. He said in Germany he usually gets around on a bike.

What’s their favorite part of the trip?

For Becker, it was going to the top of the 110-story Willis Tower in Chicago, where they had great views of the city and Lake Michigan.

Wefelmeier enjoyed driving around and shopping with Lucy Eckert and going on the Dragon’s Wing ride at Six Flags.

“We don’t have things like that in Germany, that’s why I did it,” she said. “It was really amazing.”

Any change in their impression of the United States?

“In Germany, when we talk about the USA, we all think about fast food, unhealthy food,” Becker said. But he was pleasantly surprised by the healthy food and vegetables served by his hosts, the Deitz family.

Wefelmeier, who had visited the United States twice previously, said she also had heard that all Americans are overweight but realized that wasn’t true when she arrived here.

‘Courage to explore’

On Friday, Mayor Eckert met with the visiting students and some of their hosts as part of a tour of City Hall.

“I applaud you for having the courage to explore” another country, Eckert told the students. “I think whether you’re coming from Germany to the U.S. or whether you’re coming from the U.S. to Germany, I think learning more about other countries and about each other and different lifestyles and different cultures is really important.”

Eckert discussed with the students Belleville’s German heritage, including the life of Gustave Koerner, who left Germany and moved to the United States in the 1830s.

“He’s truly one of Belleville’s most famous citizens,” Eckert said.

Koerner was an abolitionist who left Missouri because slaves were allowed there and moved to Illinois, Eckert said.

The mayor told the students how Koerner was a close friend of President Abraham Lincoln and served as lieutenant governor for Illinois and the U.S. minister to Spain.

After a tour of the police and fire departments, the students visited Koerner’s former home on Mascoutah Avenue at Abend Street.

Doris Roach, who grew up in Germany and has lived in Belleville since 1980, is the youth chairperson for the Belleville Sister Cities program. She said Paderborn area students travel to Belleville in odd years and Belleville area students go to Paderborn in even years. If you want to travel to Germany in 2016 as an exchange student or host a German exchange student in 2017, contact Roach at 618-234-3633 or jodoroach@charter.net.

This story was originally published July 18, 2015 at 6:36 PM with the headline "‘My American sister’: German exchange students talk about Belleville visit."