Повратимы?

After getting my assignment from Fulbright, I was reading up on Novosibirsk and discovered, to my astonishment, that my hometown of Minneapolis and Novosibirsk are sister cities (Sister Cities?). The word for it in Russian is “города-побратимы”, which translates to “blood brother cities.”

(Well, to be strictly accurate, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Novosibirsk are Sister Cities. But everyone in the world – except, I believe, the residents of St. Paul – knows that we just didn’t want to be mean, so we [sigh] let St. Paul tag along too. Not to denigrate ya or anything, li’l twin. As far as I know, the State Department thinks you’re cool, but I couldn’t swear to it because, you see, the opinions expressed here in no way reflect or represent the views of the State Department, and should merely be understood as the opinions of a private citizen.)

So, as you might expect, I was pretty geeked about the coincidence, and I decided to see if anybody at City Hall wanted to send a token of Minneapolitan (yes, it’s a word. My spell-checker even recognizes it) good will with me when I went. Or at least, I didn’t want to get blamed for not asking, in case they were already planning to send something.

It turned out I didn’t have to worry about that. I wasn’t too shocked to find out that authorities in Minneapolis hadn’t made a high priority of our special link with Novosibirsk, and they hadn’t been planning to send anything over there either sooner or later. In fact, they had even gotten an invitation to send a youth delegation to Novosibirsk in 2007 for some cultural exchange event (a sign that the relationship wasn’t completely defunct, at least), but had declined due to lack of funds and a committee to organize it. I gather the Sister City program is, in a general way, a little neglected, and just a teensy bit under-funded. Also, the relationship with Novosibirsk was struck up 20 years ago when Party Secretary Gorbachev paid a visit to our glorious, lakey North Star State. It may have rusted and eroded a bit more than our newer, shinier relationships with say, Uppsala, Sweden or Harbin, China.

Of course, I’m not condemning anyone in either city. This is the kind of thing that’s hard to keep strong when few residents of either partner city are committed to it. Personally, I’m not even sure what a sisterhood (or побратимство) between cities is meant to entail, or what purpose it was meant to serve when it started. And I don’t think I’d be too happy to find out, in exact figures, how few residents of Minneapolis have even heard of Novosibirsk. (Or vice versa, I guess…)

But anyway, the lady I finally talked to at City Hall (I’ll just call her “C”... I don’t know if she’d want to be identified) improvised as well as anyone could have in her place. I ended up feeling sorry for C: I’d come to her with this trivial problem that was completely out of her control, and her whole tone, every time I talked to her, was very apologetic. She seemed embarrassed at how little we, as a city, had to show for this nominal connection. C pitched around for something to send along with me, found a few things (not priceless, but at least unique), and even got me a letter signed by Minneapolis’s mayor, greeting the mayor of Novosibirsk.

I’ll clear it with the Fulbright Program first, obviously, but if it’s kosher and everything, I’ve now got a letter from my home city’s mayor and a couple of small gifts to give to whoever’s remotely interested in my city of assignment. I know it’s all pretty ridiculous, but I figured if the relationship meant something, I would have been a jerk to just ignore it… oh well.

I’ve also decided to send the gifts by pouch so as to stay under the baggage weight limit, so I won’t need to worry about this until October, at least. I figure if the relationship between our cities had stagnated this long already, a few more weeks wouldn't make a difference.