Here's a glimpse of a place more wintery than Doha. I was just in Narva, on the Russian-Estonian border, one of the most incongruous frontier points I've ever seen. Two old fortresses face off on both sides of the Narva river (Russia is on the right), with an aging bridge connecting the shores.
Russia's borders are more accidental and incoherent than most, drawn up for obscure reasons to serve empires that have long crumbled apart. But this crossing is particularly bizarre. Narva on Estonia's side is dominated by ethnic Russians, but there's still a dazzling view of the fortified showdown across the river (a fitting image for two endlessly quarreling countries).
The installations of the border post include the bridge and the corridor that extends deep into the shoreline. The awkward part is that it's possible to walk around, beneath and over all the infrastructure, while never technically breaching the frontier.
The border crossing feels like some alien body that pierces the town but remains completely separate and isolated from it.
I had a similar feeling on the Russian-Chinese border across the Amur river last summer, but there isn't actually a bridge there - only boats and ferries crossing back and forth. Here you stumble upon it in the middle of the town.
The Estonian fortress was built by the Danes in the 13th century, and the Russians added its counterpart about two hundred years later.
