On the Border, Smuggling Stories of Iztok Tomazin

Smuggling and other border stories from the Karawanks to the Himalaya, masterfully penned by Iztok Tomazin in the book On the Border, seem particularly relevant in the period of COVID restrictions, refugee and migrant crises, and other social changes, while the pioneer of free climbing in Slovenia, mountaineer and Himalayan climber, mountain rescuer and doctor, in his newly published book chronicles his own and some foreign illegal crossings of geographical borders as well as explorations and transcendences of personal borders and limitations.



On the Border, a collection of smuggling and other border stories from the Karawanks to the Himalaya, is a mountaineering book, but it crosses borders both in content and genre. "It is about rich, articulated memories equipped with authentic photographic material, which are again very relevant today in the period of refugee and migrant crises and other current social changes, recalling smuggling and other memories associated with heavily guarded interstate borders. On a personal level, it was primarily an exciting interweaving of the mountaineering adventurism of a young alpinist, defiance of legal and other restrictions and the state repressive apparatus, violation of imposed interstate borders, and dangerous but fulfilling exploration and transcendence of personal borders and limitations," emphasizes Iztok Tomazin on the occasion of the book's release.



Historically speaking, there are several parallels between smuggling and mountaineering, as smugglers, along with poachers, were often the best connoisseurs of the mountains in many places. In the former Yugoslavia, where in the north along the peaks of the Karawanks, Tomazin's home mountains, there ran a well-controlled and guarded border with Austria, he himself gained rich experience and a host of interesting, thrilling memories through illegal border crossings in both directions: "At least outwardly, I was an exemplary citizen, first an exemplary high school student and later a successful medical student, and in the last years before the breakup of Yugoslavia, already a young doctor. If you are an enthusiastic alpinist and a closed and guarded state border runs along the peaks of your beloved mountains, the motivation for illegal border crossing is even greater, especially if there are unexplored and unclimbed walls and ridges on the forbidden side of those mountains offering new opportunities for ascents and experiences. If you can combine the useful with the pleasant, i.e., the skills and joy of the alpinist in staying in the mountains with the material and other benefits of smuggled goods and the additional joy of not letting the authorities restrict you in at least some things, all the better. That was the case from start to finish of my border 'career', which ended at home after Slovenian independence but continued in the highest mountains of the world."



The book On the Border consists of three sections of stories. In the introduction, Tomazin writes a dozen literarized historical tragic border tales from Jesenice, Tržič to Jezersko, in the second and third parts he describes numerous personal smuggling stories - first from his home Karawanks with his nighttime smuggling exploits across the ridge of Košuta, Vrtača and Begunjščica, then from foreign mountains, from Turkish Ararat and Tibetan Kailash to the Himalaya, where as a doctor of mountaineering expeditions he often found himself on the thin line between permitted and forbidden with dangerous medicines and experienced on his own skin the tragic Indian-Pakistani Himalayan war and the fate of Tibetan refugees fleeing south across the Himalaya from occupied Tibet. "Smuggling trips were a challenge tailored to me, as they required a lot of engagement, courage, good preparation and prudent, bold execution. The charm of risk and adventure was equally or even more important than the practical benefit of successful smuggling. Sweet and tantalizing was the feeling after each smuggling success that I had outsmarted the authorities who soured our lives by restricting movement in the mountains and with high customs duties. I 'won' when confronting the repressive part of the state apparatus that restricted my passage to the other side of the border and made it difficult to import things I needed for my numerous activities."



"For safety from border guards and unwanted chance witnesses, I chose the worst weather conditions and the most demanding terrains for my illegal border crossings, which greatly reduced the possibility of unwanted encounters. Most often I smuggled at night, during snowfall or rain or at least in fog, over the most demanding, climbing terrain. This considerably increased the danger and difficulty of the trip, but at the same time significantly reduced the possibility that I would find myself in front of the barrels of rifles and machine guns. The stakes were high. Not so much in material form, although I smuggled quite expensive things. The biggest stake was life, and ultimately freedom, as I would most likely go to prison if caught," reflects Tomazin, who in those years smuggled at least a small truckload of goods across the Karawanks, mostly for personal or family needs: several hang gliders, a lot of mountaineering equipment for himself and friends, computers, some household appliances and slide projectors, a TV, hi-fi equipment and of course coffee, which he then sold at a profit to buy mountaineering and aviation equipment abroad again. But there was a line he never crossed in smuggling - smuggling drugs, weapons for killing or people.



Iztok Tomazin is a doctor, mountain and air rescuer, alpinist, Himalayan climber, pilot, writer, publicist and lecturer. Born in 1960 in Kranj, he lives in Križe near Tržič. Despite demanding medical studies and the profession of doctor, which he supplements with mountain and helicopter rescue, in 47 years he has completed more than five thousand mountaineering ascents and ski descents, including numerous top achievements from home mountains to the Himalaya. For four decades he has been an enthusiastic free flyer with exceptional achievements and experiences, in the last decade primarily a paraglider and BASE jumper. In parallel, he has fulfilled his youthful writing ambition - he has written several hundred medical and literary articles and eight books, including the poetry collection In Search of Shambhala, for which the legendary Tibetan leader Dalai Lama wrote the foreword. He has always devoted the most time and energy to medicine - he is a specialist in family and emergency medicine, master of public health and doctor of science in emergency medicine and primarius. For the last two decades, he has also been the director of the health center in his home Tržič.



Part of the narrative in the book takes place in foreign mountains, most is connected to the artificial border running along the natural border of the Karawanks. Tomazin is a chronicler of his own, as well as some foreign illegal crossings of this border, always in the characteristic mountainous context. On the Border is thus partly a mountaineering book, but also crosses genre borders, writes literary theorist and Tomazin's climbing partner, professor Tomo Virk in the accompanying text: "The autobiographically written narrative in a polished style mixes with descriptions of empathetically relived foreign exploits, documentary passages with pure fictional fabulation, adventure genre with reflexive and sometimes almost meditative excerpts, not lacking social-critical sharpness. A colorful interweaving that in its own way mirrors the author's versatility and quenches not only fans of tense reading but also literary connoisseurs. But not only them. The book is, among all this, also a philosophy of its own kind, even a kind of psychology of smuggling or forbidden crossing of officially staked borders in general. Tomazin unfolds before the reader the concrete social reasons for this, while at the same time trying through self-observation to reflect also deeper internal, psychological impulses, a special kind of excitement that accompanies his mountainous contraband and may not be an entirely unimportant side motive for such activity."



"More fateful and dangerous than geographical are the invisible, hard-to-define borders in people, especially those who have decision-making power. All external borders and limitations stem from them. Political events in Europe in the last decades have quite changed the attitude of at least Europeans towards interstate borders, which in united Europe have become easier to cross, permeable, with significantly fewer restrictions. It has not always been so in history. Unfortunately, due to growing nationalisms and xenophobia in the recent past and present, we are again witnessing border closures, restrictions and threats as we know them from some other times, which we naively hoped had irreversibly passed. The SARS COV 2 virus pandemic has added its own," Tomazin hits the social-current nail on the head.



A handful of Tomazin's stories is also part of the bilingual exhibition Smuggling across the Karawanks, which was created as part of the CarinthiJA 2020 project in collaboration with the Slovenian Cultural Association from Celovec, Slovenian Cultural Society Zarja from Železna Kapla, Center Rinka - Institute for Tourism and Sustainable Development of Solčava, Cultural and Artistic Society Jezersko and Tržič Museum. The exhibition was opened on November 5 in Forum Zarja in Železna Kapla, where it will be on display until January 31, 2022, it will be hosted in Tržič from May 5 to 27, 2022, and will also be on display in Solčava and Jezersko.