None. This is a signaling fence, a barbed wire with electricity in it, and some towers for surveing movement from above. On the other side of the fence is still the same state territory of today's Czech Republic. This fence went from the Baltic to the Adriatic under the name of Iron Curtain. A very true iron curtain, indeed. This fence though, came only rarely within close range to the actual border of the neighbouring state. For the former Czechoslovakia, this meant along the border with West Germany and Austria. This fence than continued in the north to the former East Germany and in the south to Hungary. The fence could been distanced up to 10 km from the border. Why? Because mother nature does not always lend good conditions to building fences! And especially, if the military wishes to be secretive, as it has been the case in the Cold War era.
The picture in question is of the signaling fence between villages of Cizov and Lukov, some 10-20 km west for the town of Znojmo, which again is situated some 10 km form the Austrian border. To my knowledge, it is one of the few remnants of this signaling fence that stretched along the entire Czechoslovak border with West Germany and Austria. The fence here is about 1,5 to 4 km from the actual border. Here, the border is the river Dyje/Thaya, which makes some spectacular meanders carving itself in to landscape. The drop from the above fairly slowly undulating landscape to the river is roughly 200 m down. In other words, quite unexpected and dramatic scene, and definitely not good for building signaling fences!
Other curiosity is that the customs stations and pass controls that have been build in the communist era, were placed before this signaling fence on the Czechoslovak side and right behind the border markers on the Austrian side. So, in the old days, after passing the customs and passport control, and after passing through the opening of the signaling fence, there where the international border crossings have been set up, one entered the so called "no man's land". To this "no man's land" had no citizen any admission unless a special permission has been granted. This permission could obtain only the locals and military. "No man's land" has been the land between the signaling fence and the actual border. Today, there is not much about the "no man's land", but two distinct features in the landscape are visible. One is, that the signaling fence had a road (fairly good standard) that went along it. Today the signaling fence is most places down, and there
are indeed no signs of it in the landscape, but the paved road is still there, leading from nowhere and going nowhere. It lost its function. The second one is, that the old piece of "no man's land" created a taxfree heaven after the fall of communism in Europe. On the main roads with international border crossings that have been created under the communist era, you can see shopping centres, gas stations etc. The new border crossings that have been created after 1990 have usually common customs and passport control, and there are no taxfree zones.
So much on this piece of history and how it shaped the landscape around the borders between the old Eastern and Western Europe.
Jesper Nielsen <jesniel@...> wrote:
And what border marks this fence?Jesper----- Original Message -----From: Jesper NielsenSent: Thursday, July 22, 2004 10:32 PMSubject: [BoundaryPoint] ROUACouple of nice border pix, with a marker.I figure they are ROUA, right?JesperNy versjon av Yahoo! Messenger
Nye ikoner og bakgrunner, webkamera med superkvalitet og dobbelt så morsom
