Even though he knows he has an entire year ahead of him in the United States, Simon Mueller of Germany is wasting no time in trying everything on the menu.
Three weeks in, Mueller, 16, is settling in as a junior at Iola High School.
As with any new place, it’s a time to distinguish the new from the familiar. Electrical sockets, what side of the road cars drive on (right), and the steering wheel, (left), how youth use their free time, how they wear their hair, what music is popular, preferred snacks, etc.
Mueller is pleasantly surprised he’s allowed to play trumpet in the school band. At home in Werl, a town of about 30,000 in western Germany, school curricula do not include music or drama, nor do they sponsor sports or clubs. Mueller has been studying the trumpet for seven years.
His first impression of his Iola peers is that they’re “freer” and that bullying is not as big a problem as in Germany.
“There’s less hate here,” he said.
Mueller’s impressions are no doubt tainted by the civil unrest back home caused by far-right groups such as the Alternative for Germany political party.
Sunday’s elections in the eastern part of the country demonstrated the influence the neo-Nazi party will now wield in Germany’s parliament.
German students are required to study the Holocaust and its extermination of 6 million Jews during World War II, Mueller said.
“The Holocaust should never be forgotten,” he said, adding his fears that Germans may be on a path to allowing history, and the horrors of the Holocaust, repeat itself.
Mueller cited xenophobic plans by far-right groups to transport immigrants from Germany to Africa.
“There’s so much hate by these groups,” he said.
That American teens may not be as aware of their country’s politics does not come as a surprise, Mueller said, though he was caught off guard when a fellow student asked if Germany, the economic powerhouse of Europe, “has electricity.”
And as eager as he is to learn about Americans’ “culture and habits,” he hopes his U.S. peers are equally curious about his homeland.
But that will take time, he knows.
Mueller is an exchange student through Iola’s Rotary club. He will spend three months at three area homes capped by a one-month coast-to-coast tour of the U.S. the summer of 2025 courtesy of the national program.
