21st December 2007

Valka, Latvia/Valga, Estonia (dpa) - Of all the EU's thousands of Eastern European communities, not one is looking forward to passport-free travel more than a small and divided town on the border of Estonia and Latvia.

Joining the Schengen common visa zone is the next step toward a closer community for the divided town of Valka in Latvia and Valga in Estonia, Valka's Mayor Unda Ozolina told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA).

However, it won't solve all the problems, the teacher-turned-mayor added: "It's easier to remove barriers at our borders than to remove barriers in our minds."

Valka, with a population of over 7,000 people, and Valga, with a population of over 15,000, used to make up the town of Walk. It was given that name by German crusaders in the Middle Ages, and kept it through centuries of Russian imperial rule.

But in 1918 the Russian Empire collapsed, and nationalist forces in its Baltic provinces founded the states of Estonia and Latvia.

Walk, in the ill-defined border region between them, was claimed by both governments until 1920, when British Colonel Stephen George Tallents, frustrated by the two sides' inability to agree, simply drew the border through the town.

Since then the border has come and gone. In 1940, the Soviet Union annexed Estonia and Latvia, abolishing the two countries as independent states and bulldozing the checkpoints between them.

When the two states regained their independence in 1991, the border crossings went back up again, and now, almost 17 years on, young people in Valka and Valga cannot even imagine a life without border controls, Ozolina said.

At present, the Valga-Valka border line zigzags through the city streets, resembling a shape of a seagull - an image the towns took on as their logo with the slogan "One City, Two Countries."

Officially, residents can cross the border at three passport check points, scattered across the towns.

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