The 2017-18 Fountain Hills High School band got to make its international debut while making a few memories this past June, when they performed in front of residents from Fountain Hills’s German Sister City, Dierdorf.

The Falcons’ trip to Germany and Austria was part of an exchange program that first brought Dierdorf students to Fountain Hills last October.

Just as the visiting Dierdorf students experienced the culture shock of coming to America, Fountain Hills students also got a little bit of a shock experiencing the differences between life in Germany and life in America.

“It opens your eyes to how different the United States is from the rest of the world,” Brenna Epply, a graduated percussion player, said. “It shows how lucky we are to have things like air conditioning. There are things here that you just don’t realize aren’t in other place, like free public restrooms.”

While there wasn’t a major difference between the German teenagers and American teenagers, there were a few differences in the law that caused the Falcons to do a double take.

“There really wasn’t much of a difference between us, but the drinking age is a lot younger than in U.S.,” tuba player Sam Aker said. “It was weird to see someone who is two years younger than you having a beer with dinner. Personally, I like where our drinking age is at.”

When Dierdorf students visited in October they were assigned a buddy in the FHHS band who, along with acting as their guide, provided the international students with a home for their stay.

The German students were able to repay that favor during the Falcons’ trip by providing boarding to their buddy just as the buddy had done for them in October.

Getting the chance to live with a German family for a week revealed the smaller differences, like how the standard size of a fridge in Germany is not our standard size.

“When I got there I mentioned something about the fridge to my host family and they were like ‘what do you mean? This is a normal size for a fridge,’” Nick Trimble said. “It was the size of what would be a mini-fridge for us. What they do is they buy food for that day and that’s it. They don’t really store drinks in the fridge, either.”

As unique and beneficial as it was to experience the differences between the two countries, the FHHS band also went on the trip to perform a show with their German counterparts.

“We spent a week traveling around Austria and lower Germany,” Aker said. “So we got there (Dierdorf) at night and the next day was a rehearsal. The day after that we rehearsed in the morning and then the show was that night.”

It turned out to be one of the quickest turnarounds for a show the FHHS band has ever done.

“We basically site read the music when we preformed,” Epply said. “They hadn’t sent the music beforehand see we didn’t even know what we were preforming until we started rehearsing.”

Even with just one day of preparation the band did so well at their performance that the audience asked for an encore, something the Falcons had never experienced before.

“We finished up the last song and it ended up we were playing with the school’s principal,” Trimble said. “He goes into the audience, says some things that none of us understand, and then he comes back up and suddenly we’re playing the last song again. So we ended up just playing it how we wanted to.”

Their trip to Europe has left many of the Falcons eager to plan their next adventure.