Life und Style
Who knew Hamburg and Auckland were related?
Doing a little research into German-New Zealand relations (the things I do for you!), I found out that Auckland, New Zealand boasts li’l ol’ Hamburg as one of its sister cities. In fact, Germany actually pioneered the concept of sister cities/twin towns/friendship towns.
It’s kind of interesting to see each language’s slight twist on thisidea. In English, you are most likely to hear ’sister city’. In German it is ‘Partnerstadt’, and French ‘ville jumelage’ ( both gender neutral, how politically correct). In the former Soviet bloc, they were (somewhat tellingly) known as ‘brother cities’.
What I was most curious about is the process involved in acquiring partner city status. Is there an official process, or does one city just flick another an email saying “I’ve noticed you around, I think you’re pretty cool - want to be sister cities?”. Or maybe that’s a little too forward. Perhaps there’s a kind of personals page for towns ‘Seeking Sister City’… “looking for a good, mid-sized town, preferably European. Must have a sense of humor and basic infrastructure. Pop. preferred: 40 - 50,000.”
Discussion
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Hey,
I truly believe that somewhere in the universe of the web there is such a page like you described it.
Looking for a sister witty, possibly nice proportioned town that is open-hearted and not on any continent other than America, cuz ya know travelling is a bitch. Ever tried to convince 40k people to move including their house? DUH!
Hilarious idea.
[...] last week when I was joking about towns seeking partners on an online personals site? Well, it exists! And here’s the [...]
In the UK they are known as “twin towns” rather than “sister cities”