BAD SODEN, Germany — A 22-person delegation from Franklin, Tennessee, traveled 4,600 miles to celebrate the suburb's 10-year anniversary with its sister city in Germany.
Franklin's mayor, an alderman, a volunteer firefighter and five board members of the nonprofit Sister Cities of Franklin and Williamson County were among those who arrived Sept. 2 in Bad Soden, near Frankfurt, Germany.
Like Franklin, Bad Soden is affluent. Like Franklin, Bad Soden is 20 minutes south of a well-known city of about 700,000 population. Bad Soden, though, is much smaller in population and size than Franklin.
The relationship started when a Tennessee native, Rachel Obermeier, who was living in Bad Soden and working for the Tennessee Tourism Department, heard that Franklin
was looking for a sister city in Germany. Obermeier reached out to a friend, a Bad Soden city parliament member named Dorothee Fink, and the conversations started.
"We had a look at Franklin, Tennessee, and we saw that there were a lot of parallels between the two cities," Fink said. "That's why we were very interested to get more information and to get closer to Franklin."
The two suburbs engaged in student and cultural exchanges for a few years before their "twinning" was formalized in 2016. At the Sept. 2 welcome dinner, leaders from both cities seemed to have a warmth and familiarity that went beyond a typical sister city relationship.
"You're sitting across the table and you're talking about your kids, where you live, where you work," said Franklin alderman and Sister Cities board member Matt Brown. "We know these people very very well. It felt like a family reunion."
The sister cities organizations in both suburbs covered nearly all the costs of hotel rooms, meals and tours of Bad Soden and Franklin. Most participants paid their own airfares. The city of Franklin paid about $6,000 in round-trip flights for Brown, Franklin Mayor Ken Moore and city communications director Milissa Reierson, Reierson said.
The day after the welcoming dinner, the suburbs hosted a press conference, a lunch, a tour of a soon-to-open Bad Soden firehouse and a dinner.
Many restaurants embrace the Germans' love for Italian and Middle Eastern food.
But several offered traditional German fare, including Grüne Soẞe, hard boiled eggs on a cold green herb sauce, and schnitzel, dumplings and a pancake bites dessert called Kaiserschmarrn (which sometimes translates into "emperor's mess").
Several participants wandered through the charming, clean, walkable town of around 23,000 people. Modern local shops intermingle downtown with several bakeries, upscale restaurants, a smoking pub and more, all a block away from a modern outdoor train station that provides a 25-minute ride to Frankfurt.
The only turbulence in the Franklin delegation's visit surfaced in the afternoon when Mayor Moore met with about 20 public high school juniors in the town next to Bad Soden. Most of the students were self-described political progressives who peppered Moore with questions about President Donald Trump's policies and behaviors and Moore's affiliation with the Republican Party.
Would you consider your city pro-Trump? What would you say are the biggest arguments to support Trump and his policies? How does being Republican influence what you do in your city? Do you have ICE raids in your city? Do you incorporate religion into governing?
Moore, a surgeon who has been mayor for 15 years, handled the questions with patience and humor, often insisting he, and most Americans, are moderates. He also pointed out that partisan politics rarely enter into how Tennessee towns are governed.
"A pothole doesn't have a Republican or Democrat affiliation," he said. "We’re in the business of serving our community."
The Franklin visit is expected to culminate with a German-American Friendship festival Sept. 5 that's expected to draw more than 3,000 people to the historic Badehaus building, a former bathhouse and gardens that have been converted into a museum and a park.
That will be the debut of a seven-week Franklin exhibit inside. It features photos large and small of Franklin landmark sites and items including books from the late Williamson County preservationist Robert Hicks, a Nashville Predators Trisha Yearwood bobblehead and a big shiny Franklin Rodeo belt buckle.
Most of the Bad Soden community leadership are expected to be at the exhibit opening. The two suburbs have grown close in the last 10 years, Fink said.
"It's really more like a family," she said. "It's more than a friendship. I know our people love Franklin, and I think it's also the other way around, ja?"
Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Franklin mayor leads 22-person envoy to celebrate its German sister city
