frontiers are wierd. discontinuities in the desert. i can't get my head round them. why is it that from tijuana to tulum, every cafe in mexico has a paper-napkin holder made of a vertical U of metal, but 3 miles south, across the belize border, suddenly everyone has decided that the correct object to hold paper napkins is a wooden tray with a sprung metal loop?
why is it that from vancouver to halifax, donuts are provided as a de rigeur snack on every street corner by tim horton; yet in america (an equally if not more snack-obsessed country) no such chain was to be seen?
why from baja california to patagonia do they speak spanish, yet in belize it is considered normal to speak english, instead? why do belizeans write their street names in paint on bits of wood, while mexicans get theirs sponsored by car manufacturers and printed on metal? why do mexicans drive like their pregnant wife is in the passenger seat, and belizeans like tomorrow would be soon enough?
the fact that differences in culture exist, i can understand (although even that question does bear reflection). what i find hard to understand is that one culture spans a large area of land, running right up to what is after all an imaginary line, and then suddenly, for no reason at all, just stops.
3 comments:
I share the same amazement for borders... I made the same question to myself when I went to Whales... it's not even a fully official border, in the sense that itis part of the "United Kingdom", but all the names of places changed radically, people smiled much more and everything was more clam... weid...
Saludos!
Wales is what sprung to mind for me too. It's the language thing that I find the strangest. How did we end up with people on the welsh side of the border speaking not a dialect but a radically different language to those of us on the English side? I suppose humans like to stick to their clans and find a sense of identity by keeping things different & separate..
Yes that is a bit strange isn't it! I've only been to Wales a long time ago, and I don't remember it. But I have another border coming up. I find that each time, I need to rest awhile in a town this side of the border to ready myself for the change, then rest once over, finding myself in the new country. Borders aren't like statelines that you can just drive over: they're real Bumps in the trip.
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