Sister City

Back in the USA, it seemed like having a sister city meant that there was an annual student exchange in high school, and that's about it. The places seemed so far away, so far that chances are that 99% of my classmates would never see the place, and the foreign exchange student was the only contact we would get, and being in high school at the time, I barely got past the "wow! that French/Spanish/German/Italian/whatever girl is so exotic!", which at the time for me meant "pretty" and "wonder if she would go to homecoming with a total nerd like me?". (For those that are wondering, none of them did, but at least I got signatures in my yearbook).

Anyway, here in Heilbronn, we have several sister cities, one of which is Beziers, France. In the overall scheme of things, Beziers is not very far away, and it is actually feasible to go for a visit. And that's why for the last couple of days, the downtown area has been full of french music, french food & french cars. They even brought along the buiding in the photo.

Oh ok, not really, I just stole that image from google images, but the guy at the tourism booth made made some pretty convincing arguments to go for a visit. So who knows, maybe someday soon I will finally visit a sister city. I guess it doesn't seem so "exotic" anymore, but that doesn't mean it won't be fun. I think this is what a sister city should be. Far enough away that they won't stop in unexpected, but close enough to visit every once in a while.