In the end, it's all happening in a way that 78-year-old Pavel, and his father before him, had never dreamed possible.

"My father used to say that the border would disappear only with gunfire, but in fact it's going peacefully," says Pavel, surveying the vine-blanketed hills around one of Europe's last divided towns.

Gorizia/Nova Gorica, uneasy urban twins for 57 years, will join the same political and economic world when the border that divides them effectively disappears as Slovenia joins an enlarged European Union on May 1.

Enlargement will draw aside the iron curtain that has made a "little Berlin" of the town since 1947 when the border brought with it customs police, checkpoints, and of course, the lucre of contraband.

"Those who really suffered under the separation are the farmers who have land on both sides. There are more than 300 hectares on the Italian side owned by Slovenes," said Tamara, an agricultural advisor in Nova Gorica, the town with has grown up on the Slovenian side since 1947.

Nature itself has blithely ignored the border, with healthy vines growing along the terraces, lit up in the central European spring by the yellow blaze of forsythias and the pink glow of peach trees.

But signs of past divisions are never far away, in this corner of Europe. By way of illustration, Pavel points to the vertical white line on his farm outhouse.

"My vineyard was cut in two," said the Slovenian, who responds to Pavel or Paolo depending on which side of the border he's on.

"The soldiers painted the line there. But what could I do? I can't fight the state, fight all of Europe, there was nothing I could do," he said, laughing at the absurdity of having a cow-house which straddled a border.

In an incident he says he remembers as if it was yesterday, he recalls a Scottish contingent of Allied soldiers at the end of World War II unwinding big reels of barbed wire across his vineyard, to the plaintive squeal of bagpipes.

At night, the Allies and the partisans of Yugoslav leader Josip Tito modified the border to suit their own needs, he says. By day, locals had to plead with the guards for access to the Italian side to tend their vines.

"The first years were really severe. You had to declare your rake, your scythe, your pike every day at the border," recalls Konrad, Pavel's friend from a nearby village.

He remembers the women wearing long skirts, and mimes their awkward gait as they returned from Italy in the evening with food and maybe several pairs of nylon stockings hidden under their dresses.

Those days are long gone. But the trafficking of contraband continues. Grappa is ferried from one side to the other in the windscreen-washer tank of cars, and meat is secreted inside the engine, according to Giovanni, a local customs officer.

But reunification, in its true sense, is still not nigh for the people of Gorizia and its Slovenian neighbour.

Even after May 1, Konrad will still have to have his border pass in his pocket, which will be a requirement for at least the next few years as Slovenia has yet to sign the Schengen Accords, which govern free movement across Europe's internal borders.

Gorizia, with its 37,000 inhabitants, and Nova Gorica with 15,000, have had a foretaste of unity since January last year, with a common bus service.

The two towns also envisage sharing a hospital, and a water purification station, but according to Tamara "May 1 won't change that much".

"For the moment, we will remain two towns, with two families, with each one having their own house."

Josko Sirk, a Slovenian who holds an Italian passport and runs an agri-tourism hotel, is phlegmatic about the border.

"Officially you could be stopped for carrying a bouquet of violets, a funeral wreath or a wedding gift, but in fact the border here has always been very open compared to Berlin. There are no mines."

"Every kind of thing went across that border," he recalls wistfully. "We always got along with each other, even if our mentalities, the system, the media, the schools, have moulded different people."