A Look Back on the First Year of CBYX

1984, a year usually associated with the dystopian novel of the same name, was anything but dystopian for 48 American college students.

It was the year Steve Jobs rolled out the first Macintosh computer, a box-like machine that had no memory built in. Total sales for cell phones were 7,000, up from 0 in 1983. Ghostbusters, starring Bill Murray, was the top grossing film.  As a duet,  Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson topped the pop charts, as did a man from my home state of Minnesota, Prince. Ronald Reagan was reelected, and the Winter Olympics were held in Yugoslavia, a country that no longer exists.

CBYX 1984 Ski Trip Germany
Drew (second from right) and fellow CBYX participants go on a holiday skiing trip.

My 47 “classmates” and I were the pilot participants in a new program, the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals.

Young and idealistic, we were wide open to what would come from the program that had chosen us, which had promised us each a year of school, work, family life, and adventure in the Bundesrepublik Deutschland. The BRD, also known as West Germany.

A Visitor’s Introduction

Our language lessons and home stays began with the gaffes that mark a visitor’s introduction to a new country. Later we’d swap stories with CBYX friends, or write home (there was no email, and phone calls cost $3/minute). As when I asked my friend’s mother if I might use the bathroom. I knew every word I needed except the verb use.  She waited patiently while I checked my Deutsch-Englisch dictionary. I found two possibilities, benutzen and verwenden, and chose verwenden. The woman laughed heartily, as I asked her if I could have the toilet and take it with me. Marcia, from Pennsylvania, arrived at her host family’s home on her first day, and the first thing they asked was if she’d like to dusch herself. And on it went for us all.

Berlin Wall 1984 CBYX Internship
Drew poses in front of the Berlin Wall in 1984.

For our first two months, our group was situated in the idyllic town of Radolfzell am Bodensee, in the fruit belt of Southern Germany. In this place, we took intensive language instruction at the Carl Duisberg Zentrum. My home stay there was with a first generation Polish family, the Kalkowskis. Maria, known to us as Frau K., led my roommate Joel and me on a day-long walk deep into a forest. We went in with a basket of sandwiches and came back with piles of wild mushrooms. On our return, we crossed a long pasture where sheep were being herded by a man in a long black cape, wearing a wide-brim hat, and marking his steps with a seven-foot shepherd’s crook. Joel and I wondered if we landed in a different century as well as on another continent.

CBYX 1984 Graduation Radolfzell
Drew speaking with fellow CBYX participant Jim Ahern, from Chicago, as they perform a German language skit for the group at their graduation from their sprachkurs in Radolfzell.

Homestays and Adventures

After Radolfzell, we all went our ways to our own cities and homestays. I spent the rest of my year in Amberg, in Northern Bavaria, where I attended the Fachoberschule and lived with the Wießner family. Edgar and Maria, my hosts, had one child, Jürg, who was in Ohio on the same program. They doted on me in a way I never before experienced. I spent the rest of the year in München, where I worked my internship at the luxurious Hilton, supervising kitchen staff. The personnel there hailed from 40 different countries, but of the 600 workers, I was the only American.

CBYX 1984 Innsbruck Austria
Drew and friends from the CBYX program travel to Innsbruck, Austria.

Most weekends were devoted to adventure, spurred on by a very strong dollar. Friends and I dressed in jacket and ties, blouses and skirts, and hitchhiked from Lake Constance to Zürich, where we heard the orchestra perform at the Tonhalle. Dressed as we were, we had no trouble getting rides. Train passes were a good deal, yet for fewer Deutschmarks than a one-way ticket to Stuttgart, you could buy a used bicycle,  fill your backpack with cheese, bread, and beer, and pedal to Salzburg, staying at youth hostels along the way.

This was a common pattern for the first year CBYXers: total immersion in our spread-out villages, at our homestays and in our schools and internships. With our limited language skills, some isolation and loneliness were inevitable. Some weekends we stayed put and pushed through. Other weekends we rode the trains to one another’s cities, finding comfort in English, and American familiarity.

Berlin Wall 1984 CBYX
Drew sprays his name on to the Berlin Wall. It came down five years later.

For our mid-year meeting, we traveled to Berlin. Berlin had the Kurfürstendamm, Europe’s Broadway, a flash point of trendy clubs, avante-garde design, and haute commerce that stood in contrast to the carefully propped and bland economy on the other side of the Wall.

Our group took a three-hour tour of the East, but it was barely a taste. We spent the first hour just getting in — “Ausweiskontrolle” (passport check). Once through the checkpoint, we gawked and were gawked at. They clearly found us strange. We looked back at them in similar wonder — are they free at all? Are they happy? If we wanted to talk to them, would they want to talk to us too? Or are they so supervised that it’s impossible?

CBYX Newspaper Article 1984 Amberger Stadtnachtrichten
Drew was featured in an article in the Amberger Stadtnachtrichten on November 3, 1984. The headline states “Large train station for the young American.” “Initially I was embarrassed about this, as I had been to much, much larger train stations in Europe and the U.S.. I thought the writer was saying that I was somehow impressed by the size of this station in this small town. My host father laughed and explained to me that it’s an expression that means welcome.”

Back Home

After our return to the United States, my friend Cary would earn her Ph.D. in German and become a professor. John from Detroit, with BMW robotics on his resumé, would become a highly sought-after engineer here. Harmon became a successful financial advisor. He still goes back to Germany and visits his host family, and they visit him in California. I graduated college, and have enjoyed successive careers as a social worker, teacher, and photographer. As a teacher, I incorporated German into every part of my curriculum, from grades one through twelve.

CBYX 1984 Completion Certificate
Drew received this certificate of participation after completing the CBYX program.

Our group has lost each other, for the most part. We didn’t have the internet to stay connected, and now many names are hard to find online. We all have the memories and experiences of CBYX Year One. None of us will ever forget the day we met and our flight from Newark to Brussels. Our pilot flew through a thunderhead, and the plane was struck by lightning. Fortunately, it was not an omen for the year to come. Year One of the CBYX was a great success for us all, and it continues to this day.

The Congress-Bundestag Young Exchange was established in 1983 by a joint resolution of the U.S. Congress and the German Bundestag to strengthen ties between Germany and the United States through citizen diplomacy. The CBYX for Young Professionals annually provides 75 Americans and 75 Germans, between the ages of 18-24, the opportunity to spend one year in each other’s countries, studying, interning, and living with hosts on a cultural immersion program.

Drew Shonka
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Drew Shonka

Drew Shonka is a Wisconsin-based photographer who has also enjoyed careers in education and social work. He shoots commercially on five continents, but his passion is documenting American festivals and how people dress for them. When not taking photos, he may be seen dancing at Mardi Gras or playing ice hockey with his family.

View all posts by Drew Shonka

5 thoughts on “A Look Back on the First Year of CBYX”

  1. Wow, what a trip I just took down memory lane. Drew forgot to mention that he and I stayed in Munich after the program ended. Do you remember our artistic moments when we used to hang various household items in our Cumquat tree on Zinneberg Str 9A? How about 2 Americans working at a Mexican resturant in the capital of Bavaria?

    I think I was voted most likely to leave Germany first. Thanks to Drew, Matt Johnson, Jim Ahern and Harmon “Kill Song” Kong, I stuck it out that first year and ended up staying a total of 4.5 years. This still remains as one of my top 3 best experiences ever.

    Thanks for sharing Drew. Now I want to go back even more than I did previously. Hello to all of our group members from 1984.
    John McNie

    1. Thank you John. I hope somehow more of us can connect!
      This was a formative time, and the memories are enduring!
      Greetings to all, Drew

    2. Dude! I totally remember that “decorated” tree in München and I think I still have that “Kill Song” workbook in a box somewhere. How funny! Cary

  2. I love this. Thank you so much for sharing. It’s so cool to see photos from CDC Radolfzell 27 years before I was there. Thanks for paving the way for me and my PPPler friends.

    1. Hi Mickey, It’s amazing to think that by now thousands of people have been a part of CBYX/PPP. It’s even better to reach across time and connect (almost three decades between our experiences!) Thank you for speaking up. Drew

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