READING, Pa. – It was a farewell gathering that wrapped up a special occasion and a momentous celebration on Monday morning.<\/p>\n
Delegates from Reading’s sister cities of Reading, England and Reutlingen, Germany paid a visit to Pennsylvania to join in a number of festivities for the Fourth of July holiday.<\/p>\n
“I arrived on Friday and then we went straight to a baseball game,” says Tony Jones, the former mayor of Reading, England. \u201cI’d never been to a baseball game. It was fantastic; [I] really, really enjoyed it.”<\/p>\n
On Saturday, the delegates participated in the Wyomissing Fourth of July parade.<\/p>\n
“We had wonderful days here in Reading,” says Thomas Keck, mayor of Reutlingen, Germany. “It’s my second stay here. We were here three years ago to celebrate the anniversary of Reading.”<\/p>\n
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WFMZ-TV | Chad Blimline<\/p>\n
During their visit they also made it to other parts of Berks and Lancaster counties.<\/p>\n
“For the first time in my life, I saw Amish people, very interesting,” says Keck. “I could talk with them in Pennsylvania Dutch. They understood me, I understood them, wonderful.”<\/p>\n
Jones first visited Reading in the wake of 9\/11 and says he’s come many times since then. He says he remembers when the U.S. celebrated the bicentennial. He wanted to be here for the 250th.<\/p>\n
“I wouldn’t hedge my bets and say I’d be around to see the 300th,” says Jones. “I could either sit at home and watch the BBC coverage of the celebrations here, or I could come back and meet with old friends and new friends and it’s special. It’s been special to be in your country for that celebration.”<\/p>\n
“I think such trips are important to bring the relationship forward,” says Keck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. – It was a farewell gathering that wrapped up a special occasion and a momentous celebration…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[102095,40018,76744,102097,102096,38754,16818,6554,28,736,128,130,129,102094,81192],"class_list":["post-237034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-250th-birthday-of-america","tag-4th-of-july","tag-amish","tag-cultural-exchange","tag-delegates","tag-england","tag-germany","tag-parade","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-reutlingen","tag-sister-cities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}