This month, we were happy to welcome our faculty visitors at both sites, namely Prof. Bettina Matthias (German Dept.), who will become the Director of the German School next year, and Prof. Linus Owens (Sociology) who both came to meet with students enrolled in the program, but also to establish or strengthen personal connections with their colleagues at both host institutions. After a series of individual meetings with colleagues from different academic disciplines at both institutions, we got together for faculty receptions in Mainz and in Berlin meeting colleagues from almost all departments where our students either had taken courses last fall or are taking courses this term: German Philology, History, Political Science, Theater Studies, Film Studies, Sociology, Anthropology. Supported by delicious food, countless conversations resulted in new ideas to strengthen the bonds between Middlebury and its host institutions in Germany. We do hope that a couple of them will become a reality over the course of the next year.