The first example comes from Greece. Two summers ago, my son and I went to Athens for a couple of weeks, where we stayed with my grandmother's very best friend -- an elderly Greek woman we'd absorbed into our family clan decades ago as a shirttail aunt. The second night after we arrived, Menie cut dinner short and shooed us all over to the TV. It was time for her favorite show, The Borders of Love. Apparently, it was the biggest TV phenomenon in both Greece and Turkey that year; in both countries, everybody hung on every episode and discussed it in the shops and streets for days afterward. So we gathered in the front room, and settled down to watch.

The Borders of Love was a Romeo-and-Juliet tale of Nazli, a beautiful young Turkish woman, who falls in love with Niko, a dashing Greek man. The series followed the various social dilemmas this unlikely pairing caused -- the cultural clashes between the two of them, issues with co-workers, bosses, neighbors, and friends, and (especially) the huge upsets this caused within their respective families. Dramatically, this isn't anything particularly new -- but there was an interesting twist that made it remarkable in a world-changing way.

Nazli's part of the story was scripted in Turkish, with Greek subtitles supplied. Niko's friends and family all spoke Greek, with Turkish subtitles supplied. And the show was shown -- and became a massive hit -- in both countries. Young Greek men snapped up posters of the elegant Nazli; Turkish girls swooned over handsome Niko.

But the show caused a shift that went much deeper than that. As Greeks and Turks found themselves rooting for the young couple to make it through (which they did: their wedding show was a landmark TV event on both sides of the Bosporus), many of them began to question the thousands of years of mutual animosity that, in most cases, had become nothing more than a reflexive habit. People from both countries began seeking each other out and having civil conversations (often with their fondness for the show as the opening piece of common ground). New trade initiatives were launched; the amount of business between the two countries soared. Greeks and Turks on the street realized they had more in common than baklava and belly dancing; that, as neighbors, they were stuck with each other -- and that might not, in the end, be an awful thing. If Nazli and Niko could make it work in the face of their crazy families, they decided, maybe the rest of them could give it a try, too.

Living next to other countries means not only old fights, wrangles and misunderstanding. Occasionally that offers, embarrassingly or not, experiences of falling in love with each other.

Anyone watched The Borders of Love?