RIAS alumni chapters gather in New York City, Cologne and Berlin
Scores of RIAS Berlin alumni took party in good-spirited parties and get-togethers in New York City, Cologne and Berlin in recent weeks. The momentum for alumni activities has really picked up in 2019 with more and more participants attending more and more events in the USA and Germany — highlighted by the week-long alumni program for 30 Americans in Berlin in November to report on and recall the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In New York, the local NYC alumni chapter got together at their unofficial clubhouse – the Long Island Acre Tavern at Times Square on Friday, December 6 for their holiday party. Michael Garguilo of WNBC in New York helped organize the well-attended event and said “we had a super turnout blast night”. Among those attending were Hannah Klouth of RTL TV, Jessica Prater of CNN, Adam Reiss of NBC, Bryan Weakland of MSNBC, Edgar Zuniga of Telemundo, filmmaker Jordan Vesey, Viviana Hurtado of Bloomberg TV, Mary Goodie of WNBC, Iris Carreras of CBS and Jessica Moskowitz of CNN.
In Cologne, a group of about a dozen alumni got together at the Deutzer Brauhaus on Thursday, December 5 to talk more about the October 2020 alumni program for 30 Germans in Washington DC about two weeks before the U.S. elections. The chapter leaders in Cologne, Berlin, Hamburg and Rhine-Main will be nominating enthusiastic and active alumni from those chapters who will possibly be working on stories in the USA or eager to help support future programs with donations.
Cologne co-leaders Bartosz Dudek of Deutsche Welle and Marcel Grzyb of NTV organised the meeting and will be passing along nominations from the Cologne chapter for the 2020 USA alumni program.
In Berlin, about 20 German and American alumni from Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne celebrated Thanksgiving at the home of RIAS chairperson Christina Higgins on Saturday November 23. It was a delightful event with authentic turkey and stuffing that many of the American expatriates attending had not had the pleasure of tasting in many years.
