LONDON — Ursula von der Leyen is going back to school on Wednesday.

Von der Leyen is making her first official trip to London as European Commission president, meeting Boris Johnson at 10 Downing Street. But she's no stranger to the U.K. capital, having spent a year studying at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the late 1970s, where she was fond of late nights and punk gigs (and kept forgetting to properly close the door to her flat).

Now she's returning to her alma mater to give a lecture titled "Old Friends, New Beginnings: building another future for the EU-U.K. partnership."

It was all very different back in 1977, when von der Leyen was an undergraduate at the University of Göttingen and her father, Ernst Albrecht, feared she was under threat from kidnappers.

Albrecht had been elected governor of the state of Lower Saxony the previous year and, with the families of German politicians being targeted by the Red Army Faction far-left terrorist group (also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang), he decided to send his daughter to study in London.

When she wasn’t painting the town red, von der Leyen studied economics.

Von der Leyen enrolled at the LSE in 1978 under the name Rose Ladson. Ladson was her American great-grandmother’s surname, and von der Leyen had been known as “Röschen” — "little rose" — as a child.

She rented a flat in Earl’s Court, at the time a relatively downmarket area of west London. The house was divided into four flats, with the ground floor occupied by the landlord, Jadwiga Rostowska, and her son, Jacek Rostowski — who would later become finance minister and deputy prime minister of Poland.

Von der Leyen lived on the floor above the Rostowskis with her maternal uncle, Erich Stromeyer, and the two families were close.

“She was having a good time and would come back fairly late,” recalled Rostowski, describing von der Leyen as “bouncy.”

“One of the problems was that she didn’t properly close the front door to the house. Which, given that the Baader-Meinhof Gang were out to kidnap her or possibly kill her, seemed rather — well — not terribly careful.”

Rostowski remembers attaching a string of “Greek cowbells” to the front door, in the hope that “she might remember to close the door at one o’clock in the morning.”

Another, unnamed contemporary of von der Leyen's told the Times that she was “keen on going to punk concerts, fond of the Buzzcocks and more into the good life than the economics — even a bit slapdash.”

When she wasn’t painting the town red, von der Leyen studied economics.

As with many universities at that time, the student population at LSE was highly politically active. Liz Anderson, who studied history there and was a contemporary of von der Leyen’s said that in 1978, students attempted to occupy the office of LSE Director Ralf Dahrendorf as part of a sit-in protest.

“LSE has always had a tradition of being a little bit left-of-center politically, but it was also a very exciting place to be a student — so many great names were teaching and lecturing there at that time,” said Anderson. “I can see why von der Leyen would have wanted to be studying at the heart of things.”

"I'll just say this: In 1978 I immersed myself for one year in this seething, international, colorful city" — Ursula von der Leyen on her time in London

Anderson doesn't recall meeting von der Leyen but that may be because the future European Commission president freely admits to having spent much of her time in London having fun, rather than studying economics or getting involved in student politics.

“I lived much more than I studied,” she told German newspaper Die Zeit in an interview published just before the Brexit referendum of 2016, in which she spoke fondly of her time in London and expressed hope Britain would remain in the EU.

Asked for more information about her London life, von der Leyen replied, “Please, no details. I'll just say this: In 1978 I immersed myself for one year in this seething, international, colorful city. For me, coming from the rather monotonous, white Germany, that was fascinating.”

As for how much her time in London shaped her, von der Leyen said, “London for me then was the epitome of modernity: freedom, the joy of life, trying everything. It gave me an inner freedom that I've kept to this day. And I kept something else from that time — the knowledge that different cultures can live very well with each other.”

If Britain voted for Brexit, von der Leyen said, the biggest thing the EU would lose would be its balance.

"On European issues, the Germans tend toward rhapsodizing, the French toward great pathos. The Italians make an impression with the art of improvisation. The Brits ground all of this with their skepticism, their understatement and their great pragmatism. If the Brits leave the EU, the high-flying could dominate and the Union could lose its footing."

Now the woman who got to know the U.K. as a 20-year-old student is charged with keeping the EU's feet on the ground without the Brits.