Sister Cities

The story of this video takes place about 1700 years ago in the 4th century, when most of Western

Europe was dominated by the Roman Empire in the twilight of its career. Christianity was starting

to become all the rage, and so a bunch of churches started popping up all around the area, including

in the town Vindinium- er… Le Mans! After some time a guy called Liborius became the Bishop

there, and he did all three things that made him into a succesful bishop. Building churches,

appointing priests, and dying. About four and a half centuries later in 836, the Frankish Empire,

also in the twilight of its career, brought the bodies of a couple saints over from the

west to the east. The city of Paderborn was in need of a patron saint and so received

our old pal Liborius. Le Mans and Paderborn then determined that the other was actually

pretty cool and that they should totally hang out again sometime. So from then on their two

churches helped each other regarding various religious stuff in order to claim the title of

the first ever sister cities by a technicality! And y’know, I’ve been thinking about a way to

escape this exile by using sister cities to my advantage. No instantaneous teleportation needed!

But let me fill you in on the details first.

Today cities don’t really become sisters for the

same religious reasons as Paderborn and Le Mans back then. Nowadays the majority are partnerships

between two different cities, often in different countries, that exists to create more connections

in trade, tourism, culture, work abroad, not killing each other… All that good stuff. Its first

modern form was created when Coventry linked up with Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in 1944 and later

with Dresden in 1956, or at least what was left of them. All three endured heavy bombing campaigns

during World War 2 and concluded that they should help each other recover. And the world agreed,

because over time sister cities started popping up around the world. It’s often difficult for cities

in the same country to work together due to them having too dissimilar populations, geographies,

climates, or even cultures and histories. At times it’s easier to work together with a city on the

other side of the world, since even if their cultures are different, if they’re of the same

scale then they’ll have similar interests. It’s why big fish look for other big fish,

and small fry look for other small fry. But sometimes cities link up for reasons that are

a lot simpler. Chicago and Warsaw due to Chicago’s large Polish-speaking population. Cologne and Rio

de Janeiro because of their love for carnivals, Toledo and Toledo because they’re both called

Toledo. And best of all: the partnership between the French town of Y and the Welsh town of

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Listen, politicians have the most boring

jobs in the world, so I think we should let them have this one because it’s the only fun they’ll

ever have! Speaking of fun, let me tell you about an example that I’m pretty fond of. Some of you

have already figured out that I live in Belgium, and over here there’s a city known as Hasselt.

It’s a city of about 80.000 inhabitants, and it looks like what you’d expect of a mid-sized

European city: pretty buildings, walkable streets, and … whatever that is. But in the North-East

you can find a spot that’s suspiciously not very European. This is the Japanese Garden of Hasselt,

the biggest Japanese garden in Europe, and a place I’ve been to a couple times, because it’s pretty!

The reason why this is here is because Hasselt is the sister city of the Japanese city of Itami,