I received an email the other day from Chandrachoodan over in Chennai taking about the idea of “sister cities”. Quoteth Wikipedia:

Town twinning or sister cities is a concept where towns or cities from geographically and politically distinct areas are paired, with the goal of fostering human contact and cultural links. In Europe, such pairs of towns are known as twin towns, friendship towns or, in German, partner towns (Partnerstädte); in North America and Australasia, the term sister cities is used for the same concept; and brother cities (города-побратимы) is the term in the former Soviet bloc.

I posted an entry back in November about the German market which operates in Victoria square every year to celebrate our German sister city, Frankfurt, but after having a look at the Birmingham entry on Wikipedia I noticed we also have several other sister cities, including Chicago.

Fast forward to today… as I was walking through Victoria square today I noticed a crowd gathering in the square below the big TV near the library. It turns out today marks the start of “Experience Chicago“, dedicated to showcasing the best of Chicagoan music, street theatre, cuisine, sports and feature films! All this will be running until Sunday (the 25th). A full listing of (mostly FREE) events is available via the aformentioned link (in icky PDF form). I’ll also make sure they’re on upcoming.org so they should appear in the event listing on the right.

I’d like to see an American Football game between the Birmingham Bulls and the Chicago Bears!