[PRCo] international visitors

[Harold Geissenheimer]

Greetings to all

I hope we dont give up on international visitors

I made my first trip to Montreal Canada in 1945
thanks to an invitation to stay with a railfan Anthony Clegg
He later went on to be a famed historian and worked for
CN.  We net his good friend Omer S A Lavelle who was
also a historian and worked for CP.  I was the foreign
visitor.

In 1989 while attending the UITP conference in Budapest,
Hungary, I met a young Hungarian railfan who was able
to attend the exhibit.  Jon Graham of NYC who was with
me also met him.  He came by the French Systra booth
and asked if any one there spoke English.  I was behind
the curtain but came out to gee him.

His name was Ferenc Joo.  That started a 15 year friendship.
He was the son of a college professor in the city of Debrecen.
He spoke Hungarian, German, Russian and English..more
important he could think in English as well as Hungarian.

Jon and I got to see more of Budapest as a result. We even
had a Hungarian dinner at his grand mother's home.

Jon and I made several trips around Europe with him.  Thats
how I rode most of the East German PCC car systems.  He has
been our guest in the USA four times and stayed either with Jon
or I.  He has made contact with a Hungarian, Andy Bata at the
New York City Transit Authority and has translated papers
for Andy.  He spoke at a FTA conference in Miami.  He is
now the secretary of a Hungarian environmental group favoring transit..

He is quite a photographer and is the Hungarian reporter for the British 
magazine
Todays Railways.  His news articles are identified by "fj"

Most recently he and his wife to be visited again and we went
to Steamtown..

He spent a week in the late 1990's here in NJ helping me
set up my computer.  (he was then working for Microsoft
in Budapest.)

In short, he has become and still is a good fiend.  And
it all started when he visited the UITP exhibit.  Ference
welcomed two foreign visitors and and inturn was
welcomed in the USA.

When I lived in Pgh, I belonged to the Rotary Club, first
in Tarentum, then Pgh.  Both clubs hosted foreign students
thru the American Field Services.  In turn they sent
students to Europe.  A very good program.

I usuallly took the foreign students sightseeing.  It was nice.

So...Lets not give up on Foreign visitors.  We have a
President who only prevviosuly made one trip overseas.
Look where we are as a result.

Perhaps we should have enrolled Boris in a Dale Carnegie course.
Too bad.  I made three semi official visits to his country and
was pleased.  His city was in the eastern part and he grew up
as a communist.  But so did Ferenc who was from DeBrecen in the
eastern part of Hungary.

Harold Geissenheimer