Just like in the previous years students sailing with their school “Öckerö Seglande Gymnasieskola” from the Swedish island Öckerö arrived at their first stop in Lübeck. Their ship, the T/S Gunilla, reached the Media Docks on Thursday, the 22^nd of August 2019.

The following day the 44 sailors and their teacher Brita Malmcrona dropped by for a visit at the Thomas-Mann-Schule and interviewed all students of class Q1e and Q2b about pressing political topics within the European Union, as for example abortion, climate change and immigration. The students were divided into groups with different topics. Our students got into groups as well and could decide who to match up with, choosing the topic that interested us the most.

After an interview that usually lasted about 45 minutes, the partners were switched, so that our Swedish guests and us could talk about multiple topics during the day. There were three interviews overall.

At 12:15 pm all of the students gathered in the cafeteria to have lunch together and afterwards got together for a game of soccer in our gym, Sweden against Germany. The game consisted of two halves, each twenty minutes. It was a very balanced game with both teams being ambitious but still fair. The Swedish ended up winning the soccer match with an end score of 2:1. All participants had lots of fun.

Since there was an invitation from the Swedish students and their teacher to later join them on their ship, some students of the TMS gladly followed that offer and got together with them. It was a nice evening, there was a tour on board and the Swedish teenagers were doing their jobs on the ship to help making that whole system work, which was very interesting to see.
Overall, meeting them was a very nice experience where everyone got to learn new things about the other country. It was a great thing to meet new people and the students of the Thomas-Mann-Schule hope to see the Swedish students again in the following years.

Text:  Franka, Ann Efje, Q1e

Fotos: Samuel-Luca, Q1e