Thinking about the "sister city" thing following a radio piece, and about how it seems pretty meaningless in many cases.
I had no idea where Ottawa's sister city is. It never seems to be mentioned nor celebrated here. Turns out we have two – Beijing and Catania.
Presumably it's supposed to foster trade and tourism relationships, but I suspect beyond an initial announcement, it usually fades into obscurity.
Does your city celebrate and build on a sister city relationship?
Afraid to say I didn't know of the city of Catania at all - apparently it's the second largest city in Sicily, at the foot of Mt Etna.
I can see why we were paired, probably our mutual volcano threat experiences. 😂
I imagine it's rather warm there today!
@oblomov Oh! Didn't know you were a sister-citizen.
We'll have to urge the cities send delegations to renew the connection. :)
fun fact, I was looking at the list of our “gemellaggi” (the gemellaggio, twinning literally, is how we call in italian the relationship of being sister cities)
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catania
and Ottowa is there, but not Beijing, so I'm guessing being a sister city is not a transitive relationship 8-D
@giuseppebilotta hello! Nice to connect.
No volcano… yet. Tomorrow, I'm not sure. Best to keep vigilant in these uncertain times.
@ottaross I didn't know anything of this! Who knows where this pairing comes from?
Anyway, in this moment there are 32 degrees. It's not that bad compared to the north of Italy, which is unusual. I don't complain that much😅
@paolabonacini I don't know how sistering begins, but I suspect ultimately it is the cities themselves that send delegations back and forth to formalize the relationship and have ceremonies. Plus I'm sure the politicians enjoy the 'vacation' to travel somewhere far away.
32C isn't too bad. We had a bit of that a couple of weeks ago, but have a nice period of 25C underway now. :)
@ottaross ours apparently are Dundee, Scotland & Helsingborg, Sweden! I never knew!
Also, there’s a good episode of Parks & Rec (season 1 or 2) where officials from Pawnee’s sister city in Venezuela come to visit and are appalled at how awful Pawnee is. It’s pretty good.
@VTDARKSIM Nice - sounds like it would be worth a visit.
Keep thinking I need to watch Parks & Rec, never managed to have the right streaming service to binge it.
@VTDARKSIM Sounds like a great potential add-on for your trip.
Good to know about P&R!
Yes. Very much.
We do also have 2;
Agen in France and Arad in Israel.
I think, mostly the idea is to select a sister city which has either the same structure/techtourism or the same swag/codes/codices. Or both.
The structure of Arad in Israel is similar cause both are somehow industrial cities be it by coal or salt mining here …
Industrial Cities like these have a large amount of multi-nationality and until the escalation I have visited it several times. Our guest families were jews or palastinians. Or none of those.
It simply did not matter in a sister city relationship!
@ottaross here (northern Italy) they are pretty common and often written on the signs at the entrance of municipalities
afaik most of the times it's just a few delegates from each place going to visit the other place for a meal every year or so
and we have also a funny case of two sister villages that are a 50 km drive from each other, in the same province (Schignano and Cermenate), which. just. why???
@ottaross I don't think they could be home for lunch.
this is Italy
the trade and tourism delegations can wake up at a comfortable time in the morning, meet for lunch¹, and then all move together to the other village for dinner² :D
¹ midday meal
² evening meal
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