From L to R: LRSC international student coordinator Brady Weber, Timotei Voicu Andreas Dieplinger, Johannes Willibald, and Niels Hegger.
Guten tag! You might think Devils Lake doesn’t see its fair share of foreign students, but we get quite a few every year at Lake Region State College. This year, we got to talk to four German students enrolled at LRSC who are part of the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals program. It is a program where American and German students ages 18 to 24 spend one year in the other’s respective country. It is sponsored by the U.S. and German governments.
Four of the students that are in LRSC are:
Andreas Dieplinger, 23, from Bavaria, with a focus on business. Johannes Willibald, 23, from Bavaria, with a focus on business. Niels Hegger, 21, from Lower Saxony with a focus on agriculture. Timotei Voicu, 24, from West Germany with a focus on sociology.
When Dieplinger first got here, his first impression was he “didn’t know if how big of a city or small of a town” Devils Lake was. He visited the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile State Historic Site in Cooperstown. His hobbies include photographing wildlife. One thing that has stuck out for him is “everybody is so helpful and nice to us.”
What stood out for Willibald was the amount of lakes and flatness. “I’m used to mountains,” he said. Willibald said that the “best thing here is the people… People are open and helpful.” He said that is not very common in Germany. In his free time, he likes to play sports, go to the gym, and play table games like pool. He’s hoping on his off time he can do a road trip to the east coast.
When Hegger applied to the program and talked to the people who would place him he said he wanted to be “somewhere cold and north” in the U.S. His first impression of Devils Lake was how much it looked “like home but less trees.” He was also stunned by how many trucks there are as most people in Germany drive small cars. He said he has “plans to go on the ice when the lake freezes over.” As someone who is focused on agriculture, he has spent time “looking at tractors and plants” when he has passed them by. He said he would be doing millwork in Grand Forks. He said at LRSC the “teachers have time for you. You can talk to them after hours. They are all motivated. In Germany, you have a lot of teachers who aren’t.”
When Voicu arrived, the first place he went to was Walmart. He said he “got very fast into the community and built up many friends and contacts.” What stood out for him is how “everything is so far by foot…it’s a different thing in Germany.” In his free time, he likes to do board sports like skateboarding, snowboarding, and surfing. He made sure to bring his skateboard with him. He said he likes how the classes at LRSC are small with 10-15 students.
