A review by joaniemaloney
Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova

4.0

'My generation in Eastern Europe came of age just as the Berlin Wall came down. This border shadowed my Bulgarian childhood during the last era of 'Socialism with a human face,' as the unfortunate slogan had it. So it was natural that a journey along the boundary quickly became fairly involving for me. Once near a border, it is impossible not to be involved, not to want to exorcise or transgress something. Just by being there, the border is an invitation. Come on, it whispers, step across the line. If you dare. To step across the line, in sunshine or under cover of night, is fear and hope rolled into one. And somewhere waits a ferryman whose face can't be seen. People die crossing borders, and sometimes just being near them. The lucky ones are reborn on the other side.'

What an intriguing, fantastical read. I would've been more rewarded if I had been more familiar with the history, as I had wanted to pick it up for the prose and the travel memoir aspect of it, thinking I could enjoy it still despite my inexperience. And I did. But because the borders between the three countries (Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey) were so intertwined and drawn and redrawn, with populations forcibly moved here and there and everything in between with all the turbulent history, it was tricky to navigate and keep track of it all, so eventually I just kept going and the countless stories blurred along the edges with the myths. Then again, even if you were more familiar, there's still this haunting sense of something not quite so easily explained of the aura along these borders, with those who have lost their homes, families, culture, language, or lives - ghosts of different forms possibly still existing in the desolate villages and woods, these forgotten places in our modern world. All of it reads as a tapestry of another place, another time, entirely.

Despite being caught up in all the tales and the strangers that Kassabova meets and being charmed here and there, I was ever aware of how dangerous, how easily one could lose a life here, be wiped off any page of history, as she travelled. I appreciate the journeys she's undertaken for this book because for who I am with my background, there are places in the world which I would never blend in and wouldn't be able to converse with the locals, much less feel safe enough to trek in these quiet woods where you could count the number of people passing through in a month or more, without any trouble at all. The lack of distance she had with the people she met and the way she was able to connect with them with their shared backgrounds - in one way or another - made this book special. I'm not sure how I would recommend this to anyone because like these borders, there isn't a firm category that you'd place this in, nor could you go into this having expectations of what you want. Everything bleeds into everything else.

It all feels like it can't possibly last, but at the same time, like it's been here forever and will continue on, in some way or another. The permanence of the impermanence, somehow.