Russell McMahon wrote:

>> My trip to Vancouver was an excellent opportunity to investigate the
>> "longest undefended border". 

> Much of Europe is like that. 

/Much/ shorter borders, though :)

> You can drive through most of the EU without much hope of seeing a
> border. 

Before it was the EU, that was a bit different. Most roads crossing borders
had some kind of border post, even though many of them didn't really do
much.

>> there is NO way I would have known that crossing that patch of grass
>> meant entering another country!

But you always (well, in my lifetime :) could cross the borders by foot,
hiking through the countryside far away from roads, without ever noticing
that there was a border. Not even a patch of cut grass. 


> There's quite a contrast getting in and out of Hungary. And if you are a
> truck driver, getting into Slovakia from the Czech republic takes
> typically about 3 days I'm told. 

If you wanted contrast, you should have been there during the Cold War
years :)  Driving through the border felt like going behind enemy lines...
Or when hiking in North-Eastern Bavarian forests, a very nice region around
the former East German border, quiet, remote and not much inhabited, and
all of a sudden you met the border... steel and concrete, electric fences,
towers with machine guns, heavily armed patrols, lighted by night, "the
whole nine yards" :)  A surreal experience.

Gerhard

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