and the people were very welcoming. I had a scholarship to study one year there. I went to college at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and the scholarship was through their German Department.
In Arizona, German is the second-most spoken-at-home foreign language. (Spanish is the most spoken at home, of course.) There are a lot of Germans in the southwest and northern Mexico. A lot of Norteno music is based on the German oompah bands, with the tubas and such.
The city I studied in (and met my American husband, who was also an exchange student there) is called "Kassel," for a Roman "castellum" built on the Fulda River that runs through the town.
Kassel is where the Brothers Grimm lived and wrote their Grimm's Fairy Tales. My host family took me around to some beautiful places connected with the fairy tales, like Rose Doernchen's (Sleeping Beauty's) castle. It's a real castle in a wooded park with deer herds and such. Very pretty.
Kassel is in the state of Hessia and is not too far northeast of Frankfurt. It used to be on the East German border, and we could see across the valley into a communist country.