Schenley Students to Visit Germany

Eight Pittsburgh Schenley High School students will travel to Pforzheim, Germany, this summer as part of the school's first-ever exchange program. From June 10 to July 1, the sophomores and juniors will live with host families, attend the German equivalent of high school, and take trips to German cities. Students will take classes of their choosing for ten days. Gary Harger, German teacher and chaperone of the venture, says one excursion in particular piques his interest -- going to Berlin. "This is of course the 20th anniversary of the [Berlin] Wall coming down, so it's exciting to make that the central point. We also are going to see a lot of the imperial German past and also the dark years of the Nazi period, so I'm really excited about that," says Harger. As part of the exchange agreement, from October 18 to November 2, eleven students from the Hilda Gymnasium in Pforzheim will partake of a similar itinerary in our region. The exchange is sponsored by the German American Partnership Program (GAPP), which gave a stipend to the students; the remainder of the money due was raised by the students themselves. The Carnegie Mellon Modern Language Department also funded a trip to Rothenburg an der Tauber, an idyllic, medieval-style German town.