Education
Sister city match with Luxembourg moves ahead
The newest sister-city partnership for La Crosse may be official within a few weeks.
A proposal to accept Junglinster in Luxembourg as a sister city will soon go to the La Crosse city council, since the city International Committee has approved the idea.
Attorney Jim Birnbaum’s family originally came to La Crosse from Luxembourg, and he tells us that an archbishop from Luxembourg helped pave the way for this project with a visit to La Crosse in 2007. The current U.S. ambassador from Luxembourg just came to La Crosse in June.
Birnbaum says many immigrants from that European country may have come to La Crosse because it felt like home.
“If you go there (to Junglinster) and drive, you think you’re in La Crosse,” he says. “It looks just like La Crosse. It has bluffs, it has a river.”
Exchanges with Junglinster already have involved Viterbo, UW-L, and Aquinas.
The seven existing sister-city partnerships with La Crosse include Epinal, France…Luoyang, China…and Dubna, Russia.