When Merle Gerhards (17) first stepped out of the plane and set foot on the ground in Ulaanbaatar – in Russian “Ulan Bator” – she already had an inkling: “This is a completely different world.” At home at the Bodelschwingh-Gymnasium, which is administered by the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, she had already heard much about this foreign country between Russia and China. “But one has to have been there in order to understand these dimensions,” says Merle Gerhards. “Suddenly one feels so small.”