By Aylin Krieger
29 Jun 2026
The guests were Dr. Annette Lang, Head of the Sister Cities Unit at the Bremen Senate Chancellery, and Randy Haubner, staff member in the Sister Cities Unit at the Senate Chancellery. To begin the event, they introduced their work and shared insights into the significance of sister-city partnerships, the special history of the connection between Bremen and Gdańsk, and the anniversary year. This was followed by an open exchange with international and German researchers, their families, and partners as well as SeniorCitizens.The SeniorCitizens team is a group of experienced individuals (often senior learners/older adult students) who volunteer in university-wide international projects.
The partnership between Bremen and Gdańsk began in 1976 under the guiding idea of “dialogue instead of Cold War.” It was the first official sister-city partnership between a West German and a Polish city. To this day, it stands for exchange, solidarity, and European connectedness. Academia is also an important part of this long-standing relationship: university cooperation, student exchange, and joint projects show how a municipal partnership can lead to concrete collaboration in research and education.
Dr. Annette Lang emphasized:
“The partnership with Gdańsk was not only Bremen’s first sister-city partnership, but also the first partnership between a West German and a Polish city. In the first decades, solidarity was a defining guiding principle of the partnership. Today, we see a vibrant exchange in many areas—in culture, business, civil society, and, of course, academia. Not all sister-city partnerships ‘automatically’ lead to cooperation between universities and student exchange. We are therefore very pleased that there are several examples of successful university partnerships between Bremen and Gdańsk.”
Café International provides newly arriving and recently arrived researchers with an open setting to make connections, share experiences, and settle into Bremen. The Café International Special showed how valuable these encounters are. They make international cooperation tangible on a personal level and highlight the role academia plays in exchange, mutual understanding, and a lived European partnership.
Further impressions
