Christian Schmitz has long had his heart in two cities. The first has been his family’s home for several generations now, but that’s a blink of an eye in Rhine-time.
Romans founded his hometown of Koblenz in 9 BCE at the junction of the Rhine and Moselle rivers. The German city is known for its castles. There are dozens in and around town – medieval, romantic, “enchanted-looking,” as the city’s tourism board puts it. A visitor tight on time may be faced with the tough choice between touring Europe’s second-largest fortress (from the year 1000), or the sprawling Stolzenfels Castle (which lies geographically at the peak of a wooded mountain, and aesthetically somewhere between Walt Disney and the Brothers Grimm).
So it’s funny that Schmitz first fell in love with Austin for its grandeur. He arrived as a 17-year-old on exchange in 1994. His host family picked him up at the then-airport in Mueller, and the drive to their house was just amazing, Schmitz says. “I was astonished by how big everything is.” No castles, but the houses seemed huge. In his temporary Texas home, Schmitz had his own room and his own bathroom. And the 17-year-old Austin boy he stayed with? That boy had his own car. Germans aren’t allowed to drive until they’re 18, but in Texas, “We can do tours on our own, without any parent, and sit in a car?” Schmitz says, twinkly-eyed. “Oh wow.”
In 1994, the Austin-Koblenz connection was new. The two had only just linked through the Sister Cities International nonprofit in 1991. Since then, and in no small thanks to Schmitz’s volunteering, something like 1,000 young Austinites have stayed in Koblenz on exchange, as well as 1,000 young Germans here. How many careers, marriages, and children came into existence thanks to this exchange? “Ach, I don’t know,” Schmitz says, though he can think of a few families in Germany. Of course, Austin has shaped Schmitz’s family. He proposed to his then-girlfriend, now-mother-of-four here in Austin. First, he had to introduce her to his “Austin Mom,” German teacher Margie Tiedt, who hosted him during his second stay in the city. Now the kids call her “Austin Granny.”
The Koblenz connection is one of Austin’s oldest, but the official sister cities count is up to 13. These partnerships cover every continent except Antarctica. Each city has yielded its own unique exchanges: news anchors in Australia, surgeons in Africa, artists in Asia.
It was a UT-Austin adviser who suggested that Kristie Bryant look into the Oita, Japan, sistership shortly after it was established in 1990. Bryant volunteered for the Austin-Oita Sister City Committee and then joined the Austin-Oita board in 1991. She never left the Oita board. Now, she also chairs the larger board of Austin Sister Cities International.
“From the very beginning, I was hooked,” Bryant says. “Citizen-to-citizen diplomacy fascinated me.”
Diplomacy is, after all, the core mission. When President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the first version of the Sister Cities program in 1956, it was in recognition of the damage done to diplomacy in World War II.
“Some people are taught – and they are captive audiences – that others, including ourselves, want war: that we are warlike, that we are materialistic, that we are, in fact, hoping for cataclysms of that kind so that a few may profit, they say, out of the misery of the world,” Eisenhower said then. “The problem is for people to get together and to leap governments – if necessary to evade governments – to work out not one method but thousands of methods by which people can gradually learn a little bit more of each other.”
Since its conception, Sister Cities International has evolved into a self-funded nonprofit, which sometimes receives federal grants. Austin Sister Cities International, the local nonprofit, operates on a very tight budget – tax filings show less than $100,000 in revenue each year. Some of those dollars from donors go toward scholarships to help elementary and high school students with plane tickets, public transport, and other expenses while they’re on exchange. Sister Cities programs shouldn’t be for only rich kids, Schmitz says. “It is something for a cultural exchange. We need to open that for everyone.”
Schmitz envisions the Koblenz connection growing – more students, more schools. But, as Eisenhower envisioned, everything here comes from the bottom up. “You need people who want to do it,” Schmitz says. Whether they’re surgeons or elementary schoolers.
This article appears in November 28 • 2025.