Welcome to Indiana!

Yes, Indian friends, welcome one and all to Indiana, home of the The Wabash Cannonball, and Peyton Manning, for that matter. Didn't i promise we'd be moving through states progressively faster as we headed East? Don't i always make good to my promises? No!? Why do you always have to bring up that ONE time, i swear to god its the only excuse you have, and its a crutch, do you hear me!?

I mean, HI kids! We're in Indiana, and today we're going to be talking about town twinning. The concept of "town twinning," or matching two different cities in two different countries for their demographic, political, or cultural similarities, with the purpose of fostering human and cultural bondage between foreign allies. The notion of twinning was brought into play following that nasty little spat we called World War II, to bring European countries closer to one another, and perhaps help them learn to cope with frog-eating, polygamy, and whatever else might have caused that big shake-down. Dwight Eisenhower embraced the idea of a "playdate" for American cities, and the 1950's saw a boom in town twinning, under the new Americanized term sister cities. Obviously Eisenhower liked the ssss.. cciti.. sound, like a snake, more than the toww.. twinn.. alliteration the Europeans originally thought up. Damned savages.

Today we're in Evansville, Indiana, third largest city in the state of Indiana, and proud sister city to Osnabruck, in Lower Saxony, Germany. While it's sometimes quite difficult to imagine how two entirely separate cities and cultures might be linked, the sisterhood between Evansville and Osnabruck comes really naturally. Both were founded in the year 780 by Charlemagne, King of the Franks!!









Which one
is Mary-Kate,
and which is Ashley!??













God, this is fun. I'm as intrigued by this as anything i've read up on in the last few months. I believe a letter is in order to Sister Cities International to brush up on where my international pen pals are hiding. San Francisco appears to have 14 sister cities, which would make San Francisco's mom a dirty tramp, but i suspected as much already. I'm pleased to see Abidjan, Ivory Coast on there, but a part of me is jealous that Oakland, just across the freezing bay, gets to share with both Mongolia AND Cuba. Dammit.

And on a final note, speaking of eccentric match-ups, let's talk for just one second about Denver and sister city, Nairobi, Kenya. I suppose that would naturally make this the Kenyan equivalent of the Qwest building:

and in fair trade, Denver's equivalent of the Uhuru monument, Pete's Kitchen.


Four Days Distance: 31.88 miles

Total Distance Covered: 1,887.87 miles

Evansville, Indiana