“If someone had told me in May that I would be working for a German newspaper, I would have laughed at him. But what seemed completely impossible in May became a reality on Monday,” Kansas City journalist Anne Marie Hunter wrote in the Hessische Allgemeine Newspaper this week. Her article, entitled “Anne Marie’s Week,” details Hunter’s first week as a guest journalist at the Kassel newspaper.

Hunter is in Germany as a part of the “Goethe Close-Up” journalist exchange. “Goethe Close-Up” is an exchange program for journalists sponsored and organized by Wunderbar Together and the Goethe-Institut. Since its launch in 2008, the project has taken place annually with a different regional focus each year.

Only one week into her exchange, Hunter has already noticed the many similarities between German and American newsrooms. “Journalists often share the same experiences whether they work in Germany, the US, or in another part of the world,” she writes. Wherever they are, journalists have to be ready to constantly adapt to an ever-changing world with new events and priorities. No matter what language they are speaking, communication is always the most important skill for a journalist to have.

In addition to writing for the paper, Hunter is involved in editorial planning, sits in on meetings, and even accompanies fellow reporters on assignments to serve as a photographer.

Hunter and her exchange partner, German journalist Michaela Pflug, will each serve as mentors in their home newsrooms and spend 3-4 weeks in each other’s countries as a guest journalist. The aim of the exchange is to establish partnerships that facilitate sustainable cooperation between media organizations on both sides of the Atlantic, both during Wunderbar Together and beyond.

Find out more about the Goethe Close-Up exchange here.