Throughout June, the Tartan Army of Scotland soccer fans descended upon Boston for the World Cup, and locals fell in love. They promised a party, and that’s exactly what they delivered. The festive vibes and new friendships have even led to plans to make Boston and Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city, sister cities.

Continuing GBH’s Morning Edition’s ongoing series exploring Boston’s international relationships, guest host Tori Bedford spoke with Susan Aitken, leader of the Glasgow City Council.

Tori Bedford: The Scots charmed us all and got everyone saying, “No Scotland, no party.” Are you surprised by the local popularity of the Tartan Army here in Boston? What makes them such passionate sports fans?

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Aitken: I think we’re not surprised. The Tartan Army’s reputation goes before them, and they really pride themselves on being really good guests when they travel the world to see Scotland play. Wherever they go, they want to be good guests and to leave a good impression and to go away with people thinking good things about Scotland and Scottish people. I think though, it’s fair to say that the reception and the bonding that took place in Boston has maybe exceeded any previous experience of the Tartan Army. We have never before been contacted by a city mayor to ask us to go into a formal partnership off the back of the Tartan Army. So something quite special has happened, I think. And the Scottish football fans, despite our national team’s very patchy record, I think it’s fair to say, and we’ve seen that in this World Cup again. Scots remain ever hopeful in the face of the evidence, and we are very, very passionate about our football in particular, and Glaswegians even more so are passionate about football. This is a huge footballing city.

Bedford: I love that the chant is “No Scotland, no party,” because some other chants for other fans of different teams will say, “Go Warriors,” or they’re hoping that they’ll win. But this is like, “We’re there, so there’s going to be a party, and then we’re going to clean up after ourselves,” which we’re also very impressed by.

Aitken: I wish they would do that more often at home, and I hope they bring that back, the cleaning up after themselves, because that doesn’t always happen back in Glasgow. But I think there is something about the triumph of hope over expectation when you’re a Scotland football fan, and that we know we’re not necessarily going to win, but very happy when we do. At the very least, you’re going to have a good time. So I think that’s why there’s that focus on the party, that rather than any sort of aggressive triumphalism around winning, there’s no point in doing that when you’re a Scotland fan. Go for the good time.

Bedford: I love that. How did the sister city partnership between the two cities come together? Came together so quickly. What do we have in common?

Aitken: Well, we’ve got a lot in common, and it was Mayor Wu who approached Glasgow, and we were delighted but surprised at the speed of it. I think often these partnerships can take years sometimes to talk about and plan for and negotiate. So this one is going to be very, very quick — but we’ve got a huge amount in common around particularly, I think, education and major global research institutions. The University of Glasgow is a top 100 university, and obviously Boston is, and Massachusetts, famous for your educational institutions that are globally renowned. And I think some of our global challenges, all cities share similar challenges. But Glasgow and Boston can point to some things that we have in common. We can work together to find those solutions. On our end, we call it a twin city, and twinning in the past was often quite a ceremonial thing, perhaps, but maybe not with a lot of substance to it. But the way that we approach it now is really about trying to derive mutual benefit and learning for both cities and a genuine exchange and I’m really confident that’s what we’ll get with Boston.

We were also particularly pleased that it was Glasgow that Mayor Wu thought of, perhaps rather than Edinburgh, because often people, particularly in the United States, will think of Edinburgh first. But I think that’s changed a bit since we hosted COP26 in Glasgow, back in 2021. And also Mayor Wu and I have actually met before. She and I were in the same cohort of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, and so, and that may have been why Glasgow was particularly on her mind. But we’re absolutely delighted, and we’re really looking forward to formalizing the agreement. I think next April is the plan, during Scotland Week in the United States.

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Bedford: Do you anticipate seeing a lot more Bostonians coming to Scotland and receiving this kind of warm welcome?

Aitken: I hope so. We pride ourselves on giving everyone a warm welcome in Glasgow. We are actually known as one of the world’s friendliest cities. That’s one of our reputations. But I think now anyone who comes to Glasgow and says they’re from Boston is going to get an extra special welcome and a cherry on top because we now absolutely look on Boston as our special friends after the amazing welcome and amazing response that we had. I understand that there is talk potentially of the New England Patriots, potentially, and the NFL games that sometimes take place abroad. I know it’s happened in London in the past, but potentially talk of Glasgow being a venue for one of those games. So that would be a great excuse for many, many Bostonians to make their way to Glasgow to watch their team play.

Bedford: That’d be so much fun. While I have you, before you go, what is the story with the traffic cones? They are everywhere. Every statue here has one.

Aitken: So, it’s been a Glasgow tradition for a long time and it kind of started as a joke in the 1980s. We have a statue of the Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, on his horse outside of what is now our modern art gallery in the center of the city. And at some point during the 1980s, I don’t know, a student or some prankster put a traffic cone on top of the Duke and quite often on top of his horse’s head as well. His horse was called Copenhagen, and so Copenhagen sometimes gets his own cone. In those days, and for a long time actually, the city used to take the cone down and treated it as vandalism. But certainly since my administration has been in, we’ve embraced it. Absolutely embraced it and it’s become a real symbol. The cone changes for to reflect different things that are happening, and right now the Duke of Wellington has a cone that says “Boston” on it, on his head, to recognize and reciprocate the welcome you’ve given us. One of the things I really like though is it is specifically a Glasgow thing, but all of the Scotland fans seem to have embraced it. We like to represent ourselves in a way that is about friendliness and fun and humor, and that’s what the cone is all about.