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4: CASE STUDY 1: THE ITALIAN/SLOVENIAN BORDER
When I meet with Anja at a café in Solkan she tells me about her own
experiences with the border. She was brought up in Nova Gorica and tells
me that when she was young in the 1980s her and her friends would always
go over to Gorizia to go shopping for branded clothes. This was before
outlet shops became common but she tells me of a Benetton store in Gorizia
where a lot of the last seasons clothes were put on sale, brought from other
Benetton stores in Italy, as people often came over from Yugoslavia to buy
them. Shopping is a reoccurring feature when you discuss the border with
people and sometimes it appears that the border was a highly useful feature.
Cheaper shopping and access to products that would normally not be
available is often what people remember. This behaviour is also a type of
resistance and manipulation of the border and the authority of the state.
I sit in my hotel room located about 15 m from the border, by the Transalpine
Square. The clock has just turned 10 p.m. when I hear tango music
drifting into my room. I look out the window and down on the square I see
maybe 20 couples dancing to the tango tunes. I walk down to the street and
sit down on the curb to enjoy the music and the view of the skilful dancers.
“What is this Why are they dancing here” I ask a girl next to me. “This
border divided people for such a long time”, she explains, “We want to
show that through peace and passion you can overcome any division of
people”. A young man comes up and whisks her away to the border that has
now been transformed into a dance floor. I realise that resisting the border
is not just something of the past, it is still going on.
People and the border
My father was born under Austria, my mother under Italy, me under
Yugoslavia and my daughter under Slovenia. We use the word under,
not in, as it is meant as being under the rule of. This way of saying under
rather than in or from is very typical from this area.
(Andrej Malnič, 2008, pers. comm.2 nd September)
These are the words of Andrej Malnič, director of the Goriški Musej who
has grown up in this area. His words demonstrate the mixed background
this area has. Looking at the remains of the border structure here I
understand that the border has played an important role in the lives of the
people in its proximity. I am curious to see what people have to say about it
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