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September 27, 2007
Unimaginable Possibility
In Gmünd, in North-Eastern Austria, the border with the Czech Republic is actually in the town. We crossed the river and there, in amongst the buildings and streets, were the small concrete cabins sitting strangely under tall all-weather roofs, looking every bit like a set from a 1970s cold war spy film. All that was missing were the red and white lifting barriers and the coils of barbed wire.
Today the Border Guards, in their small concrete cabins, were not really interested in us as we walked across. We held up passports but they just nodded and carried on reading their newspapers.
The first buildings are "American" casinos and large supermarkets selling shoes, plastic flowers and cigarettes, run by Vietnamese. Then about a mile further the Czech shops start and the first Czech shop was an ironmonger. Hooray! There´s something wonderful and fascinating about foreign ironmongery. The hinges are different, the hooks and locks and catches are different, even the nails are different. There are boxes of strange bits of metal carefully fashioned to perform unknown tasks - boxes of unimaginable possibility.
Posted by john at September 27, 2007 05:42 PM