Encountering Scales

I know we didn’t talk too much about scales and their borders in our class, but I found the thought of it interesting. What exactly is a border? On a map, a border is a line that separates two countries or regions. That line could represent a wall, a fence, a high-level border crossing with a lot of security and military, but in a lot of places the line represents nothing tangible. The obvious question: how do we know we’ve crossed it?
Another thought crossed my mind when I was thinking about this. I don’t think we need to physically enter another territory to experience the culture that derives from a region. Natives to a country or region can be viewed as a smaller scale of that territory. When we encounter them, in some ways we cross borders and enter into that country. Obviously, we could never fully get a sense of what the physical environment of that country will be like, but we would have to live there for years to get that full understanding of the culture and its relation to the land anyways.
If a person represents a region on a smaller scale, can we say the same about things like food, clothes, arts, and entertainment that derives from that place? Do our stomachs cross borders when we try different types of cuisines? Does our skin get a sense of another world when we try on native dress of another culture?