00:00One square straddling two countries.
00:06Until 2007, walls and fences ran through here,
00:10dividing Gorizia, Italy, from Nova Gorica, Slovenia.
00:16Hi guys, so this is Italy, this is Slovenia,
00:21Italy, Slovenia, it's slow, it's slow.
00:24Do you notice any difference?
00:26Alexander Gajiob doesn't notice any.
00:30He grew up in Gorizia, the son of parents from Slovenia and Azerbaijan.
00:35He was still a boy when the Iron Curtain fell and Slovenia joined the EU.
00:40As a pianist, he's in demand the world over.
00:44Now, during Nova Gorica's year as a European capital of culture,
00:48he's performing just across from his own hometown.
00:52This is, I think, a one-in-a-lifetime experience.
00:56First of all, to be here on the border representing really both countries
01:01and in a project that I have been dreaming of for a long time.
01:10Gorizia and Nova Gorica are among Europe's last divided communities,
01:15a symbol of the East-West Division.
01:17But their history tells a completely different story.
01:20For centuries, under Habsburg rule, people and cultures came together here,
01:28mostly from Italy, Central Europe and the Balkans.
01:32But the First and Second World Wars put a rude end to this peaceful coexistence.
01:38The victorious powers drew a new border right through the centre of town.
01:44The ruler of the former socialist Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito,
01:49had Nova Gorica built right across from Italy's Gorizia.
01:54Families were separated, land redistributed, and suspicions fanned on both sides.
02:00That is now a thing of the past.
02:05But traces of the division can still be found in the twin towns.
02:15In our exhibition we have several different objects that were smuggled across the border,
02:20in the bras, in the belt, underneath or inside of the shoes.
02:25The exhibition in an old border checkpoint reveals how everyday items became valuable commodities for both sides.
02:38People with terrains on the other side, they were able to cross the border with special permits.
02:43After, we got border passes.
02:46And with these border passes, also smuggling became very important.
02:50Because you needed to bring across things that it was not legal to bring across.
02:59When I was a kid, I was smuggling firecrackers,
03:01because they are still prohibited in Slovenia,
03:04but in Italy, in fact, they sell even if it's someone who is not even 18.
03:13Crossing the border was part of daily life for Alexander's family.
03:17They were very difficult years.
03:22You were always having to show your ID.
03:25I didn't have any problems.
03:29Even though I had a Russian passport and kept having to renew my residence permit.
03:35The walls and fences between Gorizia and Nova Goriza were completely removed by 2007.
03:43Young people like Alexander experienced the border very differently from their parents and grandparents.
03:50My relationship to the border was a very open one.
03:56I also had friends on both sides.
03:58I saw the border just as a sort of enlargement of a possibility.
04:02Something that in my mind almost did not exist except for, of course, the language, which is different.
04:08But speaking both for me was not an issue.
04:15But not all the checkpoints have become museum pieces.
04:19In late 2023, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government reintroduced border checks in contradiction to the borderless capitals of culture idea.
04:30Even so, the nomination green-lighted several joint projects for the two towns.
04:36One concerns the Isonzo River that separates Italy and Slovenia.
04:41A pedestrian bridge is now planned to run alongside the Solcan Railroad Bridge.
04:47One of the most important things that this European Capital of Culture has to offer is working together.
04:53It has certainly added many more bricks on which we can keep, especially my generation, the future generations can keep building upon.
05:02Building bridges, literally and figuratively.
05:06You
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