ON THE THRESHOLD:
Cultural Differences at the (Permeable) Border
What can a ski resort teach us about Ukraine and Russia?
I am writing to you from a mountaintop restaurant with Italian and Swiss flags flying under the iconic sun-glistened outline of the Matterhorn, or as the Italians call it: Monte Cervino. Just moments ago, I followed signs with the Italian flag to ski from Zermatt at the highest station in Europe down a fast and sharp ride over an arbitrary peak — one of many — that dropped me into a different country. I continued on; there was no reason to stop. The undulations were new for my legs. Unexpected drops and twists and ice patches greeted me like plates of a chef’s tasting menu or fresh pages of a novel.
Wanting to understand them a little better, I took the chairlift over the relatively short piste. On my lonely little chair, I tootled along, investigating what was below my dangling feet and thinking about what it meant to be on the other side. As soon as ideas of nationhood entered my brain, all the horrific news from breakfast flashed off the glittering ice crystals.
Is this the way a conscripted Russian soldier feels in the forests of Ukraine? What does a Ukrainian refugee think of the snow beneath their feet in Poland?
