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4: CASE STUDY 1: THE ITALIAN/SLOVENIAN BORDER are told in other places along the border. Like a fable or story that projects some kind of moral lesson, it is not the content of the story itself that is important but rather what the story stands for, a way to relate to the border and to people on the other side. For Antonio it is also, most likely, a way to deal with his and his family’s traumatic past in relation to the border. Others have not felt the same need to relate to the border at all. For Angela, a woman in her early 30s brought up in Gorizia whom I also got in contact with through common friends, her interest and focus was always directed westwards, “…my feeling when I was young was to live at the end of something. Our region is at the ‘periphery’ of Italy, far away from the capital. My attention was all focussed towards the west, towards the rest of Italy, the rest of Western Europe and the ‘western world’” (Angela, 2008, pers. comm.). At a group interview conducted in Skofije 2008 with three women and four men in their late 70s and early 80s the early years of the border came back to life through their memories and stories. Many funny anecdotes were told and one of the ladies sang a song about American soldiers. There was a lot of laughter and only the occasional sad story. I wonder if the events were really this uncomplicated or if time passed had soften these people’s memories. I ask how they felt when the new border was installed after World War II. They were not worried or upset but they told me that compared to the Iron Curtain this was nothing. It was still possible to cross and there were no high concrete walls. Without reflecting on it they project the image of the Berlin Wall as being synonymous with the Iron Curtain. There were no such thing here, hence, they do not consider this to be part of the Iron Curtain. Antonio thinks the Italian/Yugoslavian border was part of the Iron Curtain, he says they were poor on the other side, and that they were communists, but Maria is not so sure. Andrej has a complex way of looking at the border in relationship to the Iron Curtain. For two days he drives me around the border areas. He stops and shows me different structures and sections of the border. He uses the term Iron Curtain a lot. He says things like “that watchtower was part of the Iron Curtain” or, “that’s where the Iron Curtain ran”. When our two day tour of the border areas is finished I ask him if he thinks this border was part of the Iron Curtain and he immediately answers no. I realise that Andrej in his capacity of museum director sees the Iron Curtain as something that sells from a heritage point of view but which also conflicts with his own experiences growing up by the border. The tourist value that is attached to the Iron Curtain is not farfetched. On the internet there are plenty of travel descriptions of people 113
AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN claiming to be crossing the former Iron Curtain when they cross the Italian/Slovenian border. A group of British cyclists are hanging out in the Transalpine Square outside the Nova Gorica railway station waiting for a train. They take pictures of each other jumping over the border and standing with one foot in Italy and one in Slovenia. I ask them what the significance of the place is. “It’s pretty awesome that you can now just cross over what was once the Iron Curtain,” says one of the guys and makes an extra jump over the border line as if to enforce his point. Some concluding points The materiality of the border shows the different layers of its history. It provides an understanding of times of division but also of cross border contact and reunion. First and foremost the materiality of the border shows the interaction of people in a highly controlled environment. It also shows the struggle for control in the border landscape by the military but also by other actors connected to the border whether for single crossings or regular interaction. The remains of the military within the border have to a large degree disappeared and at a first glance they may appear nonexistent. On closer scrutiny, however, the traces can be seen and different characters appear. The most apparent information gained from the materiality of the border is about its different functions. For example, some remains are more defensive in character, such as bunkers or military stations that are built to withstand attack and supply troops. Related to these are also the remains that point to surveillance activities along the border. Here we see watchtowers, such as the one near the village of Šempeter or the long paths along the border in Nova Gorica. Perhaps most obvious is the surveillance along the ridge of Mount Sabotino/Sabotin where the double paths run along the border. One of the places where the material of the control exercised at borders is most clear and still remains is at the border crossings. Here many of the buildings, lanes and road barriers still stand, but are now abandoned. With the air of a ghost town the Casa Rossa/Rožna Dolina crossing complex is now quickly passed by traffic no longer held up by congestion caused by rigorous checks. Besides controlling the movement of people these crossings were also part of an important administrative border infrastructure where pre-EU regulations required control of goods in a stricter fashion. 114
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An Archaeology of the Iron Curtain
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An Archaeology of the Iron Curtain
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Contents Acknowledgements 11 CHAPTE
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The end of a journey 212 Sammanfatt
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AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN
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CHAPTER 1 Introduction Standing on
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1: INTRODUCTION carried out of the
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1: INTRODUCTION they may be… It i
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1: INTRODUCTION where the observer
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1: INTRODUCTION former Iron Curtain
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1: INTRODUCTION criticism from othe
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1: INTRODUCTION itioned somewhere i
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1: INTRODUCTION World War II dividi
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CHAPTER 2 A physical metaphor Concr
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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR established
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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR The changing
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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR the events t
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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR As time has
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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR highly influ
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2: A PHYSICAL METAPHOR popular idea
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5: CASE STUDY 2: THE CZECH/AUSTRIAN
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CHAPTER 6 An archaeology of the Iro
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6: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTA
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Figure 102: Fence and Watch Tower a
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Sammanfattning (Summary in Swedish)
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SAMMANFATTNING En fysisk metafor I
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SAMMANFATTNING komst och kunskapsf
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SAMMANFATTNING Fältstudier av läm
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SAMMANFATTNING som försöker ta si
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SAMMANFATTNING mets dilemma”. Han
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Södertörn Doctoral Dissertations
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33. Sofie Bedford, Islamic activism
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67. Anne Kaun, Civic Experiences an
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Stockholm Studies in Archaeology Se
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29. LINDGREN, Christina. 2004. Män
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The Iron Curtain was seen as the di
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