...
Ferihegy was not my first border adventure. During a high school spring break in
1988, my girlfriend and I travelled to Sopron, a town near the Austrian border, to
taste the local wines and at last spend a long unsupervised weekend together.
Incidentally, Sopron is known as the city of loyalty because of what happened there
in 1921—in a citywide referendum, Sopron chose to be in Hungary rather than
Austria, and the whole country took them to its bosom (though their descendants,
in the years of Socialism, were not convinced of the wisdom of the decision). We
were travelling on a domestic intercity train, but a border guard got on anyway and
asked us about the purpose of our journey, aggressively warning us that we should
not even think of fleeing to Austria because we would be caught and then we would
be in a lot of trouble. We could hardly contain our laughter.
Nevertheless, I must have suffered a mild form of post-party-state trauma:
before we went to Venice recently, my wife, well aware that our identity cards were
enough to enter Italy, firmly decided to leave her passport at home. When it was
our turn at Treviso Airport, the border policewoman hesitated for a moment. After
studying both sides of the plastic card—I was about to reach into my pocket for
my wife's passport which I had secreted there—the officer produced a laminated
document, located the Hungarian identity card on the list, and shepherded us on
smilingly. I was surprised and relieved, but my wife apparently did not think for a
moment there might be a problem. In a few weeks' time we are going skiing in the
French Alps with some friends. I have already started to convince myself that a
passport won't be necessary, but for the time being I think I will eventually end up
slipping it into my inside pocket.
Hungary and eight other EU member states joined the Schengen Zone on 21
December 2007, which means we now stand a good chance of being able to travel
as far as Portugal with our identity cards without being stopped by border guards.
True, we have to slow down a little at Hegyeshalom until the gates are demolished
at the old border crossing station, but this shouldn't take more than a few months.
The opening of the borders was not celebrated with such euphoria as the decision
to allow East German tourists to cross into Austria in 1989. For a long time,
passport control has been a mere formality; if you had as many EU passports as
people in the car, the guards would wave you through without any further ado.
Austrian border guards, with their eye for detail, may have noticed that the
stickers on at least one in five Hungarian cars (according to my non-representative
survey) show a country totally unlike the Hungary in official documents. The weird
shape is historical Hungary as it used to be before the Treaty of Trianon. The use
of these stickers shows that to this day millions of Hungarians are unable to
accept the fact that treaties between the major powers after the First and Second
World Wars saw two thirds of Hungary's territories annexed to neighbouring
countries with a better sense of diplomacy.
...
The borders drawn at Trianon have had the most absurd and tragic effect in
some places. In Szelmenc, a small village along the Slovak–Ukrainian border
inhabited by Hungarians, villagers had for decades been forced to travel
50 kilometres to the nearest border crossing station whenever they wanted to hug
family members or friends living just 20 metres away. The small border crossing
stations that were opened over the last few years have made the lives of these
people, as well as people who like visiting shops and pubs in neighbouring
villages, much more convenient. However, the new state of affairs after the
introduction of easy border—crossing options did not lack absurdity either. Cered,
a village in Hungary, is found only a few hundred metres from Tajti (Tachty) in
Slovakia. In summer 2006 a paved road was built between the villages, but the
border was only opened for excursionists, which meant that while pedestrians and
cyclists were allowed to cross, cars were not. In a bid to enforce this rule, local
border guards agreed to saw off a metre and a half of the barriers to help cyclists
cross without difficulty.
It quickly transpired however that you cannot just go and saw off pieces of
barriers at Hungarian borders. Fortunately, a creative solution was found—the
Slovaks chopped off the end of the barriers on their side, while Hungarians raised
theirs (this was not against the rules). Still, the authorities decided to man the post
for two more weeks (apparently they still had the budget for that). Everyone was
happy: cyclists were riding happily back and forth, and the Hungarian border
guards left two weeks later, satisfied. This was when the problems began.
Motorists who had heard about the opening of the borders and who came from
more remote areas saw that the barriers on the Hungarian side were raised, whilst
those on the Slovak side, although somewhat shorter, were padlocked. They
assumed this must be a mistake, they took the law into their own hands, broke
the padlocks and drove merrily on. Of course, the Slovak border guards installed
new padlocks the next day, and this game went on for a while. Finally, the Slovak
officers must have contacted their Hungarian counterparts, since the barriers on
the Hungarian side were also fitted with padlocks to make things absolutely clear.
Unfortunately, this also blocked the path of cyclists wanting to cross the border
who refused to rest on their laurels either, sawing off the end of the barrier on the
Hungarian side one night instead. This situation prevailed for a year and a half;
that is, until the extension of the Schengen Zone on 21 December 2007. Since
then, people, or for that matter, cars, can cross the green border wherever they
like, including roads blocked by half a barrier.
...