Today I worked the fee gate ($5 USD is required for each adult) and had the pleasure of meeting Prof. Dr. Jaroslav Kobliha, head of the Department of Dendrology and Forest Tree Breeding, of the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, Czech Republic (www.czu.cz). He was escorted by a forestry professor from NC State and accompanied by two young Czech senior students who displayed a wonderful and friendly demeanor with excellent English.
The Czech forestry professionals are engaged with NC State in a forestry project of tree farming Frazier Firs for Christmas trees. Tree farming is popular farther north from here and the Czech people are also getting involved, looking to the universities as resources.
How appropriate, I thought! Here we have educators from the land of the Good King Wenceslaus learning with foresters here how to grow Christmas trees on a commercial basis.
Lois visited with them in the gift shop and told them how we had such a great time in Prague back in 1995.
As they were leaving, I had a chance to visit as I was on lunch break. I told them my family came from Burgenland (south from Bratislava and s.e. from Vienna) and that I had the pleasure of exploring Seewinkle. They recognized this preserve as being adjacent to Neusiedlersee in Austria. That made me happy to know that we shared common ground.
A day earlier we met a couple from The Netherlands who were visiting the Cradle of Forestry. We exchanged stories and talked about the American presidential campaign.
It is definitely a benefit of this volunteer job to meet people from other places who are visiting us here in the Cradle of Forestry.
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