A taste of the USA, then here to stay

Coming to America wasn’t a decision Corinna and Stephan Korten took lightly.

They had both been to the United States on multiple occasions, but this time they wouldn’t be returning to their home near Dusseldorf, Germany, and their two children, Jenna, 8, and Calle, 1, would be staying here with them.

“I think my parents were pretty much in shock,” Corinna said. “I am an only child.”

She had fallen in love with America decades before.

In high school in 1990, Corinna’s family hosted an exchange student from Cedarburg for a couple of weeks, Camie Schaff.

Corinna came to America a year later for two weeks, first

staying with Schaff and then with Amy Schwan.

The families, Corinna said, were easygoing and she had such a good time that she asked her parents if she could come back  later that year for three months. Her father said yes and her mother said no. Her father’s vote won out.

“It was only for three months, but it impacted my life for sure,” Corinna said.

Vacations, baptisms and weddings across the pond followed.

“I just kept coming back,” she said.

She brought her husband in 2006 while she was pregnant with their daughter. It was his first trip to the U.S., and he quickly felt the same way. Stephan got along well with the husbands of Corinna’s American friends.

“I really don’t know what it is about the area and the people. We just loved it,” Corinna said.

“The people are friendly, and you have so much space here.”

Life circumstances eventually changed to allow them to come for good.

Corinna and Stephan met while working for a bank. Their last names were so similar — Corinna Korting and Stephan Korten — that a cafeteria employee told Stephan he owed $5. He questioned the charge since it was his first day on the job.

She showed him the name. It wasn’t his, but Stephan decided he had to meet the person with the similar name. He did, and the two hit it off.

Corinna later left the bank to earn a degree in business from the University of Cologne, and her future husband stayed at the bank.

That bank eventually closed, and Stephan’s severance package of one year’s salary allowed him time to study business.

The couple started World of Clamping, which distributes vacuum tables and other equipment to companies that work with computer numerical-controlled machines. They ended up making so many trips to the U.S. for business that they decided it would be easier if they moved here.

Stephan arrived first, and Corinna followed months later with the children in 2016.

Corinna and Stephan already had the travel bug, and had planned to move sometime. Stephan spent one year in Brazil after high school, and both had traveled across Europe. Corinna’s parents had a sailboat in the Netherlands, an hour’s drive from their home.

The family settled in Saukville before moving to Port Washington because they had longtime friends in the area forged during those exchange student days.

“Everyone always asks us, ‘Why Wisconsin?’” Corinna said with a laugh. “Most tourists would say East Coast, West Coast, Florida maybe. Wisconsin and the Great Lakes are not so well known.”

The family had to adjust to Wisconsin winters. Dusseldorf doesn’t get much snow.

“That was a new experience, especially the one with the polar vortex,” Corinna said, adding that “shoveling snow was a new workout for us.”

Stephan works part-time for the Amish Craftsman Guild II in Cedarburg, and Corinna runs World of Clamping from their home.

Their son has been pretty much raised American since, but their daughter had a bigger adjustment at Saukville Elementary School.

“All she could say was ‘Hello, my name is Jenna’ and ‘I’m 8,’” Corinna said.

Corinna accompanied her to school the first few days and got help from her “amazing teachers.”

An iPad with a translator app was a plus, and six weeks later Corinna remembers seeing one of her teachers smiling after a field trip to Riveredge Nature Center.

“‘Jenna started talking to me today,’” Corinna was told.

Jenna kept learning English, and when she recently bumped into one of her former elementary school teachers he noticed she had lost her accent.

But she never lost her native language. Stephan and Corinna want their children to know English, but they don’t want them to lose German. At home, the couple only speak German to each other and to the children. They answer in English.

It didn’t take Calle long to pick up English, but at first he would mix languages in the same sentence.

“He was all over the place,” Corinna said. “He will take German in middle school and high school.”

Talking for Corinna is not difficult, although she is still learning American pronunciation of German words.

She likes it when an older gentleman happily asks how she is doing when she walks into Walmart.

“It just makes your day better,” she said.

Others ask where she is from, picking up on a simple accent from “hello,” and share stories of their ancestors.

“The friendliness is really nice,” Corinna said.

She misses a few things from home, including health care.

“In Germany, you go to the doctor and don’t think about cost. You realize what a social net you had when you don’t have it anymore,” she said.

Brats are similar, albeit with expanded flavors beyond the different kinds of meat and spicy versions in Germany.

“I’ve never had so many brats here,” she said.

Her parents have come to love strawberry brats, and her mother had a definitive opinion the first time she saw Lake Michigan.

“That’s not a lake. That’s the ocean,” she said.

The family is in the right place for two of its interests, hiking and kayaking, which are harder to come by in Germany.

“Here in Wisconsin there are so many nice parks and they are so well maintained,” Corinna said.

The Kortens are working on getting a green card and someday may try to become U.S. citizens while maintaining German citizenship status, Corinna said.

She plans to attend fireworks in Port on July Fourth.

America wasn’t her country to begin with, but it is now.