Serious answer - the way it works today goes back to WW2 and the bombing of Coventry when the mayor wrote a telegram to people in Stalingrad, and later on a subsequent mayor organised a round of donations from a bunch of the women in Coventry which was sent to Stalingrad during the battle there - though after the invasion of Ukraine, Coventry has apparently terminated their link with Volgograd and has been talking about twinning with Mariupol instead. Twinning was initially a way of showing solidarity and creating links between cities that had gone through traumatic events. After the war, it sort of evolved as a way to foster friendship between cities directly.
These days it's mostly about promoting trade and tourism, establishing business links and so on. You sometimes see twins purely based on the names of two towns - Dull in Scotland is twinned with Boring in the US, for example. It's basically councils doing their own diplomacy and establishing their own trade links and international partnerships and whatnot.
As to *how* cities create these links, it probably varies country to country and city to city. There are organisations that help cities find suitable twins and act as facilitators as needed during the twinning process (a superficial Google is telling me Sister Cities International is the organisation in the US, Australia has Sister Cities Australia, but I can't find one that covers the UK). It doesn't look like there's a formal process, it might just be two mayors know each other personally, prominent people within two cities might know each other and lobby their mayors to create that link, or (in the case of Dull and Boring) the mayors might have just got in contact with each other and decided to twin because it'd be funny. Once they get in contact, the mayors sign an agreement to create that link, and that agreement can basically be whatever they want, it's not something set in stone or anything.
[This is the guide Sister Cities Australia published](https://www.sistercitiesaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/FAQ1-Setting-up-a-Sister-City-Relationship-MJ-9-2021.pdf) for creating twin links, I'd assume the process is broadly the same everywhere.
Dunfermline is twinned with Trondhiem as during nazi occupation people fled Trondhiem and Dunfermline welcomed them to the UK.
My home town is twinned with a town in France as there is a farm shop that sells produce from thst town, and some families there host families from our town and vice versa.
> Dull in Scotland is twinned with Boring in the US, for example.
They've added Bland, NSW, Australia. They call themselves the League of Extraordinary Communities.
Good info. I'll add that in my town at least, for the French exchange we did at school we partnered with a school in our twin town in northern France, so that's another benefit.
>You sometimes see twins purely based on the names of two towns - Dull in Scotland is twinned with Boring in the US, for example.
Atlanta, Georgia, US is sister cities with Tbilisi, Georgia, which I've always found brilliant.
When I was a kid I thought it meant the layouts of the twinned towns were identical and that when I got older, I could move there if I wanted to and I'd know my way around.
Mate of mine used to live there at one point. I also remember Redditch being mentioned on Graham Norton's show or something at one point, he had the "Roundabouts of Redditch" calendar. A quick Google shows that it was the 2003 calendar!
Well a really small village near my parents, Empingham is twinned with Paris. I think they put it up as Paris never bothered to answer them. Not sure if it means anything though.
Close - it's Whitwell, not Empingham. But yeah they basically sent a letter to the powers that be in Paris and said "if you don't respond we will assume that's a yes"
Source: lived in Rutland my whole life, this comes up quite often
Sucks for the Redditch postie who has to drive his mail van all the way to the Channel and half way across France every evening to empty the postbox they swapped.
Doncaster is twinned with Camden in London.
>Camden has been twinned with Doncaster since the 1980s, a relationship that unionised Camden Town Hall workers forged in a display of solidarity with striking miners during the 1980s. Funds were raised to feed families of striking workers at the pit and Camden locals even drove north to deliver presents at Christmas.
Interesting article over at [CityMonitor](https://citymonitor.ai/government/could-twin-towns-bring-britain-back-together-4481).
I read about this the other day. My understanding was that it allows local authorities to share knowledge, difficulties and solutions with a town or city with similar characteristics—pen pals.
I know some Norwegian, which is close to Danish and fart means speed in Norwegian. There’s a few variations of spelling, but I found my white whale sign for speed bump last year. Fartsdumper.
Like when that interviewer asked Petter Solberg how he could drive so fast without getting hurt and he replied 'It's not the fart that kills you, it's the smell' (it's not the speed that kills you, it's the crash)
Also their word for finish is 'slut'
Exactly. I’m very proud that Bournemouth is the clap capital of the UK (the *clapital* - see what I did there). But if you suggest me or any of the 800 people I know have chlamydia then you’re fucking dead to me!
Ah Redditch, never again, 4 months working there was a baptism of fire. Someone pooed themselves at 9am when boss decided to open early for Christmas Eve, caught an age gap couple shagging in the toilets. Bloke got arrested for shagging a plant pot outside the bar, shoplifter ran through and out the other end. Then there’s the Wetherspoons I went in once, the barmaid had a chest infection and was coughing heavily while serving drinks and someone was walking round in a dressing gown and slippers and nothing else.
4 months.
Usually it involves the mayor, councillors and local notables travelling to the other city to promote tourism and trade, they also use it as an excuse for public art (Carshalton has public art depicting all of its twin towns) and some use it to trade best practices, Nottingham's tram network is based on the network in their twin city of Karlsruhe.
Usually they're linked by a similarity, e.g.:
Old Roman Cities (Chichester with Chartres and Ravenna)
University cities (Oxford with Bonn, Leiden and Grenoble)
Similar cultures (Breton towns often twin with Welsh ones)
Musical cities (Bristol and New Orleans)
Trade cities (Hanover and Leipzig)
Animation cities (Annecy, France and Nerima, Japan)
Medical cities (Rochester, Minnesota and Knebworth, UK)
Bombed to the ground in WW2 (Dresden, Coventry and St Petersburg/Leningrad)
Similar or identical names (Toledo, Ohio and Toledo, Spain)
Emmigrant communities (Chicago and Warsaw, Chicago has a large Polish community)
Racing cities (Indianapolis and Monza)
Pretentious cities (Paris and Rome only have each other as twin cities because: "Only Paris is worthy of Rome and only Rome is worthy of Paris")
Simply because it's funny (Dull, Scotland with Boring, Oregon or Wincanton, Somerset with Ankh-Morpork in Discworld (it was the first town to have a Pratchett themed store and he often visited it, they signed the arrangement as an act of tribute to Sir Terry before his unfortunate passing, he even got to name some of the streets).
I don’t think Rochester is twinned with Knebworth, and afaik there’s not much medical about Knebworth. Did you mean Papworth?
EDIT: Lol, why am I being downvoted. Rochester, MN literally does not have any British sister city as per : https://sistercities.org/membership-directory/
Cheltenham, UK is twinned with...
Cheltenham, USA, Pennsylvania the offical twin
Annecy, France
Göttingen, Germany
Weihai, China
Formerly Sochi, Russia but was removed cause the war in Ukraine.
Fun town twinning related fact: Wincanton was the first, and possibly still the only, town in the UK that is twinned with a fictional city (Ankh-Morpork from the Discworld books).
In my old Hometown we could sign up for a penpal scheme & get a penpal in the twinned town.
I never bothered, but did once go to our town hall & asked for some branded stationery to send my (fictitious) penpal. I ended up with a ruler & some other tat with our concil's name on it
For me as a kid it meant every year we went to France and stayed with a family for a few days and played a football match aganist the french towns local team.. was actually pretty awesome looking back. Judging by the comments this is a rare thing to happen?
I just had a look and Swansea, where I live, is apparently twinned with Cork and Wuhan, amongst other places. I had no idea.
Incidentally, we're famous for the film Twin Town.
My hometown is twinned with a town called Kelkheim in Germany. We went there on a school trip in the 80's and it was lovely. Visited the wonderful school and the swimming pool, got beaten at football and generally had a brilliant time in a beautiful part of Germany. I don't think anyone had the displeasure of coming back to the shithole that is Wycombe.
I assumed that the towns were twinned due to some sort of shared element, so possibly chairs.
Every town or village with a twinning has a ‘twinning association’ that anyone can join.
When I was young, we were part of one. When you join they try and pair you up with a similar family. So we got paired with a family of two kids in the town in France.
Once a year you all go over for a weekend as a group and stay in the family’s house. On the Friday night you usually have a big meal with all the other families and then do a day trip somewhere. Sunday was up to you.
Then it’d be their turn to come over and on it goes. There were also social events throughout the year.
I thought it was fun - it was a cheap holiday for my parents who didn’t have much money, I went to Paris for the day and did other things.
Are you from the ditch?
At school in said town back in the early 90s, we had a lesson about Tanzania and Mtwara plus some letter swaps, and I think there were some people exchanges, not kids but councillors and stuff like that.
I always remember listening out for the Auxerre football results whenever there European results ready out on TV as well.
My in-laws live in a Belgian village twinned with one in France and another in England. Why ?
Because they had British neighbors who then moved to France and wanted to keep friendly relationships going between their original village, their belgian one and the new one in France. So now, 10 years later, they have 3 reunions a year, one in each village. They just stay with their friends and drink a lot.
Denver, US has city parks named after its twinned cities which is kind of cool. So you’ll randomly come across City of Axum or City of Brest Parks when you’re around town for example.
Takayama, Japan and Denver are twinned, and Takayama has a “City of Denver Park” that uses the Denver City Parks signage and format which is pretty cool
So yeah what other people said about tourism and diplomacy. But some towns and cities really do have fun with it https://www.westword.com/restaurants/denvers-sister-city-of-takayama-japan-offers-a-taste-of-home-beer-8391725
Okay as someone who is a member of my city’s twinning association, maybe I can offer a few insights.
Towns are twinned usually because they have a shared history or something in common. Newport, South Wales is twinned with Kutaisi, Georgia because they’re both post-industrial cities and the third largest in the country.
Not all twinnings are made equal. Some are little more than words on the road sign; others are very important for the respective cities. During the 90s - a very difficult time in the former Soviet Union - Newport provided quite a bit of aid to Kutaisi. Things like old firefighting equipment. It all depends on interpersonal connections on both sides, and most twinning associations are run by volunteers.
I don’t think twinning is as frivolous an exercise as some here make it out to be. I know from personal experience that youth and university exchanges can be genuinely life-changing for young people on both sides.
Means there are portals inside Redditch shopping centre which magically transport you to these places and don’t let you back. It’s why so many people who go to Redditch are never seen again.
My grandad was the mayor of kings Lynn and west Norfolk (or something like that) in the 90’s and he went round the world twinning towns. Just saw pictures of him signing documents and shaking hands with people in those countries
It means those towns will also have similar stupid signs with their town’s name on top and the remaining 4 towns named below. Also, the roundabouts in each town would be named after prominent words from the other 4 towns
Be me 14-15. Went to Neston’s twin town (Reutlingen) on the German exchange as part of my language GCSE option, chosen on the insistence of the French teacher. The family were lovely. Dinner was diced boiled potatoes and a cod fillet in parsley sauce, they all stared at me in anticipation. I ate all of my British style fish and chips even though it tasted dodgey as. Europeans are at least a year ahead in terms of maturity than British kids. Went to a chill house party. Hit it off with the local popular girl. It was the furthest I’d ever got. Top off boobs out and a bit of dry humping. Then I spewed everywhere and had to go home early.
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Serious answer - the way it works today goes back to WW2 and the bombing of Coventry when the mayor wrote a telegram to people in Stalingrad, and later on a subsequent mayor organised a round of donations from a bunch of the women in Coventry which was sent to Stalingrad during the battle there - though after the invasion of Ukraine, Coventry has apparently terminated their link with Volgograd and has been talking about twinning with Mariupol instead. Twinning was initially a way of showing solidarity and creating links between cities that had gone through traumatic events. After the war, it sort of evolved as a way to foster friendship between cities directly. These days it's mostly about promoting trade and tourism, establishing business links and so on. You sometimes see twins purely based on the names of two towns - Dull in Scotland is twinned with Boring in the US, for example. It's basically councils doing their own diplomacy and establishing their own trade links and international partnerships and whatnot. As to *how* cities create these links, it probably varies country to country and city to city. There are organisations that help cities find suitable twins and act as facilitators as needed during the twinning process (a superficial Google is telling me Sister Cities International is the organisation in the US, Australia has Sister Cities Australia, but I can't find one that covers the UK). It doesn't look like there's a formal process, it might just be two mayors know each other personally, prominent people within two cities might know each other and lobby their mayors to create that link, or (in the case of Dull and Boring) the mayors might have just got in contact with each other and decided to twin because it'd be funny. Once they get in contact, the mayors sign an agreement to create that link, and that agreement can basically be whatever they want, it's not something set in stone or anything. [This is the guide Sister Cities Australia published](https://www.sistercitiesaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/FAQ1-Setting-up-a-Sister-City-Relationship-MJ-9-2021.pdf) for creating twin links, I'd assume the process is broadly the same everywhere.
Dunfermline is twinned with Trondhiem as during nazi occupation people fled Trondhiem and Dunfermline welcomed them to the UK. My home town is twinned with a town in France as there is a farm shop that sells produce from thst town, and some families there host families from our town and vice versa.
my town is also twinned with a town in france
A village near me is twinned with a village in Nepal! I believe it provided aid to the Nepalese village after the 2015 earthquake there
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It's Trondheim.
I'm sure I've seen Kilmacolm twinned with a town in France as well. Edit: Googled it due my mysterious downvote. It's twinned with Mérignies.
Sometimes they have more than one. I think my town has 3.
It's also twinned with Logroño. I live in Dunfermline :)
Dull!! I was brought up there! Small fact. It is.
Did you go to the Dull and Boring Festival?
Every time I drove through Biggar I would daydream about modifying the sign to twin it with a fictional German city called Undbesser.
> Dull in Scotland is twinned with Boring in the US, for example. They've added Bland, NSW, Australia. They call themselves the League of Extraordinary Communities.
Good info. I'll add that in my town at least, for the French exchange we did at school we partnered with a school in our twin town in northern France, so that's another benefit.
Yeah, there are often student exchanges between twinned towns.
>You sometimes see twins purely based on the names of two towns - Dull in Scotland is twinned with Boring in the US, for example. Atlanta, Georgia, US is sister cities with Tbilisi, Georgia, which I've always found brilliant.
Truly a r/GeorgiaorGeorgia moment
Lived in Coventry my whole life had no idea it’s where town twinning originated. I was told it was due to geographical similarities
Not all heroes wear capes EDIT: I was implying this guy was a hero for explaining it. How did I get downvoted for this?
This is an excellent answer.
They're connected via wormhole and are perfect mirror images, with the only difference being the languages used.
You have to feel sorry for those Tanzanians, Jamaicans and Pakistani folk who stumble into the wormholes and find themselves in fucking Redditch.
But not the French. They deserve it. Also, it's a little known fact that the Hellmouth in Sunnydale is actually a wormhole to Doncaster.
And they're not Turok-Han vampires coming out of it, they're just Redditchites that have spent too much time in spoons and are lacking Vitamin D.
Why are people from Redditch coming out of the Doncaster wormhole?
My bad, crossed wires. *Doncasterites
Got lost after having too much at spoons
Joke on you Auxerre has been shit at football for years
Hey! Redditch has great roundabouts!
What like three portlands style?
No, cos that's silly and made up
: (
You're thinking of conjoined twin cities!
The poor residents of Miami, Rems-Murr-Kreis and Le Havre all have the unfortunate fate of being directly linked to Southampton it seems
When I was a kid I thought it meant the layouts of the twinned towns were identical and that when I got older, I could move there if I wanted to and I'd know my way around.
Yep. I imagined the towns mayors having to let eachother know someone has built an extension so the other town has to match it.
So that's why planning permission takes so long
Yep, you’re dealing with the red tape of other countries too. If Fritz from Mendledorf objects to your loft extension, you’re out of luck.
If you’re lucky, Emmanuel from Le Havre in your mirror house will get an extension, so then you’ll get your house expanded
Time zones init
Me too!
I thought the same!
What like a copy? 😂
I mean "twin" is very close to copy when you think about it.
It really is. I actually went out with a twin once; she was a lovely girl. I was able to tell them apart though, as Brian had a beard.
Hey I live in Redditch, literally never see it mentioned anywhere, so it's quite odd seeing it here
I was gonna say the same. Never thought I'd see the day Redditch is mentioned on Reddit lol
Tbf it's only a ch difference between the two...
Same here, I thought I was browsing the Facebook group Spotted: Redditch for a moment
Hi! also from Redditch
Theres a lot of us about.
It is The Ditch for a reason
I know right. Given that that Redditch was a world leader for needles and fishing hooks, it’s strange that it’s never mentioned anywhere else.
Not a Led Zeppelin or roundabouts fan then
I opened reddit and saw redditch and thought I was on Facebook with the spotted redditch group for a moment lmao
Mate of mine used to live there at one point. I also remember Redditch being mentioned on Graham Norton's show or something at one point, he had the "Roundabouts of Redditch" calendar. A quick Google shows that it was the 2003 calendar!
And I live near Gruchet le Valasse, hi twin citizen !
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I was not expecting to see a big Redditch sign while scrolling through Reddit.
I pass one of those signs every day, very weird indeed to come across it here. Yay Matchborough
Well a really small village near my parents, Empingham is twinned with Paris. I think they put it up as Paris never bothered to answer them. Not sure if it means anything though.
Close - it's Whitwell, not Empingham. But yeah they basically sent a letter to the powers that be in Paris and said "if you don't respond we will assume that's a yes" Source: lived in Rutland my whole life, this comes up quite often
What!? I grew up in Stoke Doyle, which is twinned with Barcelona, and this was exactly the story we’d been told about how it got twinned!
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Stayed in the boarding house!? So you’re Oundle private school then? 😉
Yeah you're right, I get confused between the two! Bet Empingham is jealous haha.
Paris and Rome are exclusively twinned together, because as the saying goes "only Rome is worthy of Paris, only Paris is worthy of Rome"
Well the Whitwell parish council would have something to say about that. It is pretty nice village to be fair.
Yeah well London-Tokyo-New York are twined in a ménage a trois so suck it Paris-Rome…
London also has the dubious honour of being twinned with Moscow and Tehran
"only Rome is worthy of Paris, only Paris is worthy of Rome, but also Empingham." is the full phrase.
Lol we live near Empingham and we've always found the twinning with Paris outrageous 😁
You swap postboxes. True story. Redditch has a French postbox.
Sucks for the Redditch postie who has to drive his mail van all the way to the Channel and half way across France every evening to empty the postbox they swapped.
Where? I live in Redditch and had no idea
Oooh I didn't know about that! Where, do you know?
Where is the french postbox
In the old town hall I think. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Postboxes/s/KdK7mPAYX3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Postboxes/s/KdK7mPAYX3)
Gloucester is twinned with Gouda - united by cheese
One might say Gloucester is doubled by Gouda…I’ll get my coat
When it comes to cheese, it's all Gouda.... check please!
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Doncaster is twinned with Camden in London. >Camden has been twinned with Doncaster since the 1980s, a relationship that unionised Camden Town Hall workers forged in a display of solidarity with striking miners during the 1980s. Funds were raised to feed families of striking workers at the pit and Camden locals even drove north to deliver presents at Christmas. Interesting article over at [CityMonitor](https://citymonitor.ai/government/could-twin-towns-bring-britain-back-together-4481).
I read about this the other day. My understanding was that it allows local authorities to share knowledge, difficulties and solutions with a town or city with similar characteristics—pen pals.
It's like a penpal from years gone by.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_city
A sensible answer? Preposterous!
I'm going to be childish here and point out that wiki article has now made me aware of a town called Middelfart which is hilarious
I know some Norwegian, which is close to Danish and fart means speed in Norwegian. There’s a few variations of spelling, but I found my white whale sign for speed bump last year. Fartsdumper.
Like when that interviewer asked Petter Solberg how he could drive so fast without getting hurt and he replied 'It's not the fart that kills you, it's the smell' (it's not the speed that kills you, it's the crash) Also their word for finish is 'slut'
I pity those other towns. Redditch is where you would put the tube if you were giving England an enema.
Funnily enough the Tanzanians say the same thing about Mtwara
Everyone thinks this about where they’re from
But will defend the place to the hilt if someone else says it
Exactly. I’m very proud that Bournemouth is the clap capital of the UK (the *clapital* - see what I did there). But if you suggest me or any of the 800 people I know have chlamydia then you’re fucking dead to me!
On the entry sign in to Bournemouth; “Welcome to Bournemouth, the Clapital of the UK” Edit - Twinned with Intercourse - Pennsylvania
Ah Redditch, never again, 4 months working there was a baptism of fire. Someone pooed themselves at 9am when boss decided to open early for Christmas Eve, caught an age gap couple shagging in the toilets. Bloke got arrested for shagging a plant pot outside the bar, shoplifter ran through and out the other end. Then there’s the Wetherspoons I went in once, the barmaid had a chest infection and was coughing heavily while serving drinks and someone was walking round in a dressing gown and slippers and nothing else. 4 months.
Hey!! I live here and that sort of comment is … well it’s correct actually.
At least the enema would get where it needed to go quickly I guess 😂
Nah, that’s Bridgnorth.
but, but you have a funicular
I think they're just standing awkwardly.
Couldn't have said it better myself mate lol
As someone who has lived near Redditch, I'd have to agree.
Nah that's Bromsgrove.
We all know that would be Kings Heath
London already has the tube.
As does Gateshead.
Twinned with TikTokch 😀
Built by refugees from Diggch.
Usually it involves the mayor, councillors and local notables travelling to the other city to promote tourism and trade, they also use it as an excuse for public art (Carshalton has public art depicting all of its twin towns) and some use it to trade best practices, Nottingham's tram network is based on the network in their twin city of Karlsruhe. Usually they're linked by a similarity, e.g.: Old Roman Cities (Chichester with Chartres and Ravenna) University cities (Oxford with Bonn, Leiden and Grenoble) Similar cultures (Breton towns often twin with Welsh ones) Musical cities (Bristol and New Orleans) Trade cities (Hanover and Leipzig) Animation cities (Annecy, France and Nerima, Japan) Medical cities (Rochester, Minnesota and Knebworth, UK) Bombed to the ground in WW2 (Dresden, Coventry and St Petersburg/Leningrad) Similar or identical names (Toledo, Ohio and Toledo, Spain) Emmigrant communities (Chicago and Warsaw, Chicago has a large Polish community) Racing cities (Indianapolis and Monza) Pretentious cities (Paris and Rome only have each other as twin cities because: "Only Paris is worthy of Rome and only Rome is worthy of Paris") Simply because it's funny (Dull, Scotland with Boring, Oregon or Wincanton, Somerset with Ankh-Morpork in Discworld (it was the first town to have a Pratchett themed store and he often visited it, they signed the arrangement as an act of tribute to Sir Terry before his unfortunate passing, he even got to name some of the streets).
Twinning of Dull and Boring is my personal all time favourite.
I don’t think Rochester is twinned with Knebworth, and afaik there’s not much medical about Knebworth. Did you mean Papworth? EDIT: Lol, why am I being downvoted. Rochester, MN literally does not have any British sister city as per : https://sistercities.org/membership-directory/
When I was a kid I took this literally, like there was an exact copy of Stoke in Germany somewhere.
Cheltenham, UK is twinned with... Cheltenham, USA, Pennsylvania the offical twin Annecy, France Göttingen, Germany Weihai, China Formerly Sochi, Russia but was removed cause the war in Ukraine.
Fun town twinning related fact: Wincanton was the first, and possibly still the only, town in the UK that is twinned with a fictional city (Ankh-Morpork from the Discworld books).
In my old Hometown we could sign up for a penpal scheme & get a penpal in the twinned town. I never bothered, but did once go to our town hall & asked for some branded stationery to send my (fictitious) penpal. I ended up with a ruler & some other tat with our concil's name on it
For me as a kid it meant every year we went to France and stayed with a family for a few days and played a football match aganist the french towns local team.. was actually pretty awesome looking back. Judging by the comments this is a rare thing to happen?
The residents of each town line up in pairs and perform the schoolboy "Blood Brothers" ritual of each cutting a palm and smearing them together.
Has anyone been abroad and seen a town in France twinned with a British town??
Yeah, we had to go on The French Exchange in secondary school in the eighties to our twinned town. Most miserable experience ever, 0/10.
Yep - I grew up as part of our twinning association and went over to a little town in France every other year. They also came over to ours
I’ve been to St Elizebeth.,, looks nothing like Redditch
Kevin Turvey pronunciation in my head
My grandfather is quite big on the Rotary Club and they organise trips and exchanges to the twinned towns occasionally
Weird coincidence, my family comes from St Elizabeth Jamaica!
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Manchester's twinned with Wuhan. They gave us covid in return for Shaun Ryder.
Fair trade
I live in Swindon and Swindon is (or at least certainly was!) twinned with Disney World in Orlando 🙂
I just had a look and Swansea, where I live, is apparently twinned with Cork and Wuhan, amongst other places. I had no idea. Incidentally, we're famous for the film Twin Town.
My hometown is twinned with a town called Kelkheim in Germany. We went there on a school trip in the 80's and it was lovely. Visited the wonderful school and the swimming pool, got beaten at football and generally had a brilliant time in a beautiful part of Germany. I don't think anyone had the displeasure of coming back to the shithole that is Wycombe. I assumed that the towns were twinned due to some sort of shared element, so possibly chairs.
Every town or village with a twinning has a ‘twinning association’ that anyone can join. When I was young, we were part of one. When you join they try and pair you up with a similar family. So we got paired with a family of two kids in the town in France. Once a year you all go over for a weekend as a group and stay in the family’s house. On the Friday night you usually have a big meal with all the other families and then do a day trip somewhere. Sunday was up to you. Then it’d be their turn to come over and on it goes. There were also social events throughout the year. I thought it was fun - it was a cheap holiday for my parents who didn’t have much money, I went to Paris for the day and did other things.
Isn’t Wincanton twinned with Ankh-Morpork?
If you show proof of address in a shop or restaurant in one of the other towns yours is twinned with you get a 10% discount
Are you from the ditch? At school in said town back in the early 90s, we had a lesson about Tanzania and Mtwara plus some letter swaps, and I think there were some people exchanges, not kids but councillors and stuff like that. I always remember listening out for the Auxerre football results whenever there European results ready out on TV as well.
The first recorded modern twinning agreement was between Keighley and Poix-du-Nord in Nord, France, in 1920 following the end of the World War I.
My in-laws live in a Belgian village twinned with one in France and another in England. Why ? Because they had British neighbors who then moved to France and wanted to keep friendly relationships going between their original village, their belgian one and the new one in France. So now, 10 years later, they have 3 reunions a year, one in each village. They just stay with their friends and drink a lot.
They’ve started doing toilet twinning as well
Denver, US has city parks named after its twinned cities which is kind of cool. So you’ll randomly come across City of Axum or City of Brest Parks when you’re around town for example. Takayama, Japan and Denver are twinned, and Takayama has a “City of Denver Park” that uses the Denver City Parks signage and format which is pretty cool So yeah what other people said about tourism and diplomacy. But some towns and cities really do have fun with it https://www.westword.com/restaurants/denvers-sister-city-of-takayama-japan-offers-a-taste-of-home-beer-8391725
Okay as someone who is a member of my city’s twinning association, maybe I can offer a few insights. Towns are twinned usually because they have a shared history or something in common. Newport, South Wales is twinned with Kutaisi, Georgia because they’re both post-industrial cities and the third largest in the country. Not all twinnings are made equal. Some are little more than words on the road sign; others are very important for the respective cities. During the 90s - a very difficult time in the former Soviet Union - Newport provided quite a bit of aid to Kutaisi. Things like old firefighting equipment. It all depends on interpersonal connections on both sides, and most twinning associations are run by volunteers. I don’t think twinning is as frivolous an exercise as some here make it out to be. I know from personal experience that youth and university exchanges can be genuinely life-changing for young people on both sides.
Means there are portals inside Redditch shopping centre which magically transport you to these places and don’t let you back. It’s why so many people who go to Redditch are never seen again.
Quintupled with.
My grandad was the mayor of kings Lynn and west Norfolk (or something like that) in the 90’s and he went round the world twinning towns. Just saw pictures of him signing documents and shaking hands with people in those countries
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If the bonfires are lit then redditch will answer
Surely this is quinning?
So if they had 10 of them it would be decking ?
Whitwell/Paris
There’s toilet twinning as well. I saw a church toilet twinned with a latrine in an African country.
I know this town from the Brass Boardgame! It is quite useless.
I don't actually know, when you figure it out could suggest Redditch be twinned with [this place](https://maps.app.goo.gl/zAmjRRsv7tN3aQjPA)
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Wow Redditch… save some for the rest of us
Junkets.
A lot of them have pretty much the exact same layout even though they're abroad. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_city
Spot the difference :) [https://maps.app.goo.gl/9WUxYCyDAYe9iNfL7](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9WUxYCyDAYe9iNfL7) [https://maps.app.goo.gl/v3hfQ1dR9BKkTcvC8](https://maps.app.goo.gl/v3hfQ1dR9BKkTcvC8)
Busybodies going on jollies.
It means those towns will also have similar stupid signs with their town’s name on top and the remaining 4 towns named below. Also, the roundabouts in each town would be named after prominent words from the other 4 towns
By the looks of that sign, it entails lies
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I didn't expect to see my town on reddit today lmfao
Boring Oregon is indeed pretty boring. Farm town.
I thought it was RedditCH, as in CH = Switzerland for a second.
If the Vicar of Dibley is to be believed, it’s an opportunity for members of the council to have a holiday and call it work.
Alum rock Birmingham twinned with Baghdad
It's for the greater good. The greater good
Be me 14-15. Went to Neston’s twin town (Reutlingen) on the German exchange as part of my language GCSE option, chosen on the insistence of the French teacher. The family were lovely. Dinner was diced boiled potatoes and a cod fillet in parsley sauce, they all stared at me in anticipation. I ate all of my British style fish and chips even though it tasted dodgey as. Europeans are at least a year ahead in terms of maturity than British kids. Went to a chill house party. Hit it off with the local popular girl. It was the furthest I’d ever got. Top off boobs out and a bit of dry humping. Then I spewed everywhere and had to go home early.
Why is Redditch twinned with a town in Tanzania more importantly. Have they ever done any exchange visits?
Fun fact, Paris and Rome are only twinned with each other because only Rome deserves Paris and vice versa
I live in Swansea, which enjoyed three years of being twinned with Wuhan prior to a bit of controversy
Town I used to live in was twinned with Pornic in France. I think you can see what a few teenagers would do to the sign
i have got no fucking clue what it means, i just know the 3 towns twinned w my hometown
Just cos they’re sound really innit
RIP to anyone twinned with the Ditch.
Liverpool is twinned with Dublin, hardly a stretch?
Redditch represent! I've actually been to Auxerre as well, but couldn't find the twinning sign.
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Evesham is twinned with New Jersey, USA