'Ambassador Club' celebrates Butler County, region
A varied band of ambassadors spread the word about Butler County last month during a week's visit to Germany.
The group included Jack Cohen, the Butler County Tourism and Convention Bureau president; Tammy Schuey, assistant general manager of the Butler Eagle; Fred Caesar, president of the Friends of Saxonburg Museum and a board member for the Saxonburg Historical Restoration Commission; Janice Pakozdi-Luffy, controller of Bear Metallurgical in East Butler; David Murray and Julia Murray of Portersville; Andreas Beck and Melanie Beck, owners of Beyond Spots and Dots the bureau's ad agency; Kathy Allen of Armstrong Farms; and Judy Ferree, owner of the Saxonburg Hotel.
Schuey said, “We officially dubbed ourselves the Butler County Tourism Ambassador Club.”
Pakozdi-Luffy said, “I had attended the tourism dinner earlier this year when Jack announced a group would be traveling to Germany. That touched a nerve in me. It sounded interesting.”
The group, put together by Cohen, took an eight-hour flight from Pittsburgh to Frankfurt Aug. 22 and then had three-hour bus trip to the city of Erfurt in the state of Thuringia in central Germany.
Erfurt is the 1,270-year-old capital of Thuringia.
Once there, the group went on a walking tour of the city's Old Quarter.
The following day, the group toured the Petersberg Citadel, described as the only extensively preserved town fortress in Central Europe.
Ferree was impressed.
“I think I enjoyed the history, the old buildings and how well preserved everything was,” she said.
“The architecture and construction was so amazing. It was amazing to think they were able to build something like the Citadel so long ago,” she said. “And the beer was pretty good, too,” Ferree added.
A lunch buffet consisting of what the guide called “hearty, rustic Thuringian” fare followed.
The Butler County group then toured Erfurt's Old Synagogue, whose construction dates to 1100. It now houses an exhibition on the culture and history of the Erfurt Jewish community in the Middle Ages.
The group then boarded a bus and traveled to the next stop on its itinerary, the city of Eisenach.
The next day, the first stop was the birthplace of Eisenach's most famous son, Johann Sebastian Bach.
The composer was born in the city in 1685 and lived there until he was 10. His old home was converted into the Bachhaus, what has been described as one of Germany's most visited music museums.
The afternoon was spent touring the mountaintop Wartburg Castle.
Schuey said the castle is associated with the 11th century St. Elizabeth who lived at the castle until she turned her back on court life and established a hospital at the foot of Wartburg. She was canonized in 1235, four years after her death.
Schuey said, “Martin Luther converted the New Testament to German at that castle, basically standardizing the German language.”
The next day the group traveled to Saxonburg's sister city, Muhlhausen, for the city's Kirmes parade.
Schuey said, “He (Cohen) got the group together to participate in the parade. The whole reason we went there was for the parade in Muhlhausen.”
Ferree said the Kirmes Parade came about because when in the past the town's 25 churches each had its own festival which the town mayor was obligated to attend.
She said a past mayor decided to put them all together in one festival of festivals to save time.Muhlhausen was chosen a decade ago by the county Tourism and Convention Bureau to be Saxonburg's sister city because it is the birthplace of John Augustus Roebling.Roebling was the immigrant civil engineer who invented wire rope used to build several bridges, including the Brooklyn Bridge, as well as the founder of Saxonburg.Caesar said, “I'm the volunteer curator of the Saxonburg Museum and talk a lot about John Roebling. I volunteered to go on this trip to get an understanding of John and his brother Carl.“I wanted to see the Muhlhausen connection. I wanted to see what it was like in the heartland,” Caesar said.The Butler County traveling companions marched in the parade in Muhlhausen, where a large statue of John Roebling graces the town square, and talked to residents there about visiting Saxonburg.The parade also served as an occasion for Saxonburg and Muhlhausen to renew their sister city relationship for another 10 years.Saxonburg Mayor Bill Gillespie, who was in Muhlhausen in a separate group, signed the agreement with his counterpart Mayor Johannes Bruns.“It was a great honor to be there to extend the sister city agreement,” Gillespie said.“One of the highlights was when one of the councilmen invited us back to his house. His family and neighbors brought food and we sat around for hours talking.”Cohen's group walked the one-and-half-mile parade route.Schuey said, “My particular favorite part was representing not just Butler County but the United States in the parade.“We walked with the mayor of Muhlhausen in the parade and invited to stand on a platform with the mayor,” she said.“We had cards about Butler County that we tried to hand out as often as possible to encourage people to come visit us,” said Schuey.Pakozdi-Luffy said, “We talked to a number of people. It's amazing how many people speak English. During the parade, we were handing out business cards. We were meeting people and I think there is an interest.”Cohen said, “The idea behind it was to let people know that we had come to see the beauty of their communities and it was their turn to come back to see the beauty of ours.”“Each of the folks in our group were given tourism ambassador cards that said give us a call,” he added.
“The truth of it is we have a company there that is working to sell these packages to come here,” Cohen said.“Each night for me, when the group got together to discuss what they saw that day — for me the best experience was them seeing things for the first time.”Pakozdi-Luffy said she was impressed by Wartburg Castle, especially one of its rooms.“One particular room was dedicated to mosiacs. It was totally amazing. It was on the walls, the ceiling, the columns,” she said. “It was just so impressive. You had to appreciate the artistry.“It contained three to four million pieces. Six laborers took five years to complete it. To me that was just amazing,” she said.And it wasn't just the ambassadors who enjoyed the visit.“I have only praise for the manner in which Jack Cohen's Butler County Tourism team, on both sides of the Atlantic, organized a seemless series of meaningful and memorable events,” said Randell Anderson, the group's tour guide for four days.“As an American working as a tour guide in Germany, it was an honor accompanying the Butler County delegation.”
