TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/062590/0625270.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.9 KB | 197 lines

                                                                                TRAVEL, Page 78

Lanes into the Past



A TIME correspondent's guide to Eastern Europe: Don't expect
nouvelle cuisine

By JOHN BORRELL/CLUJ -- With reporting by Veit V.
Dengler/Budapest and Gertraud Lessing/Weimar


    It is a warm summer day in the hills of northern
Transylvania. There is little traffic on the road, a strip of
patched macadam that bisects the valley and climbs slowly
through the trees to disappear in the direction of the
Hungarian border. A pair of covered Gypsy wagons comes into
view, each pulled by a stocky horse. As the wagons draw
abreast, the driver of the first lifts his hat and waves. The
second driver has stretched out and gone to sleep, the reins
held loosely in hands clasped over his ample stomach.

    Such bucolic tableaux, this one in Romania, are themselves
reason enough for visiting Eastern Europe now that revolution
has cut the barbed wire and the red tape that kept local
citizens in and, in most cases, Westerners out. If there is a
silver lining in the clouds that darkened the region for nearly
a half-century, it is the fact that communist centralized
planning never brought quite the mechanization of agriculture
that is taken for granted in the West. This may not provide
much comfort for the people of the bloc, but it has left a
certain charm for a generation from the West that tends to
associate horses with racetracks or riding schools, and cows
with feedlots and automated milking sheds.

    Driving down a country lane in Poland in early summer, when
the poplar trees are releasing blizzards of fluffy white seeds,
a visitor comes across horse carts in which families dressed
in Sunday finery are headed for a nearby town. Chickens roam
in farmyards; geese strut around small ponds. Since fields are
unfenced and holdings rarely more than 20 acres, cows are
tethered. Twice a day the farmer's wife will put a stool down
next to the cow and milk by hand. Because Poland was the least
collectivized of the bloc countries, it has a particularly
picturesque countryside, including forests where edible
mushrooms are avidly gathered in late autumn.

    But getting to such Bruegelesque views, whether in Poland
or Romania or elsewhere in Eastern Europe, can be a challenge.
If communism created an attraction by making time stand still,
it also left the region without an adequate tourism
infrastructure. Country inns and small hotels are not unknown:
in one little town in eastern Hungary, for instance, a hostelry
offers a clean bed (toilet and bathroom down the corridor) for
$6 a night. In the dining room, a Gypsy violinist  helps
compensate for the heavy meal. But such places are rare.

    More troubling is the fact that the region's capital cities
are desperately short of hotel space. Every night this summer,
Warsaw will need 3,000 more beds than are available. Prague,
which has 6,000 tourist-class beds, needs to double its
capacity if it is to begin to cope with demand. It is as bad,
if not worse, in Budapest. "We just can't keep up with the
boom," says Gyorgy Szekely, vice president of Ibusz, the
state-run travel company. "We need more of everything." Given
the accommodations shortage, the best advice for tourists is
to set out with confirmed reservations.

    Unless, that is, the visitors are young or adventurous.
Qualifying on either of those counts -- better still on both
-- opens up other possibilities. Staying in private homes is
now not only legal -- it was prohibited under communism for
ideological reasons -- but also encouraged by the state. ROOM
TO LET signs are springing up all over Hungary; private
landlords sometimes even approach foreigners at Budapest
railway stations, offering rooms. While prices are generally
low in Western terms -- from $10 to $30 a night -- standards
vary. A visitor may end up in a turn-of-the-century house with
high ceilings or a grubby room in a tenement block. Since the
booking system remains fairly rigid, visitors should be
flexible. In East Germany changing from an expensive room
overlooking a busy railway station to a cheaper one next to a
quiet courtyard can prove to be impossible. Rules are still
rules, and a voucher is for what it says it is for.

    Accommodations are not the only thing in short supply. In
the summer, restaurants, especially the better ones, are often
booked days in advance. In Romania and Bulgaria, even a room
at a hotel does not guarantee a visitor a seat in the hotel's
restaurant. In Poland one may have to stand in line for barszcz
(beet soup) and golabki (meat-filled  rolled cabbage). In Prague
if one hankers after crisp roast duck and three kinds of
dumplings at a restaurant with a view of Hradcany Castle and
the Vltava River, one must reserve several days ahead.

    Whatever the restaurant, expect to inhale much cigarette
smoke during the meal; no-smoking sections are unknown in
Eastern Europe. One more tip: for nouvelle cuisine, go
somewhere else. At its best, East European food is a little
like grandma's: ample servings, thick sauces and whipped cream
on most desserts. But certainly by Western standards, eating
out is cheap. An excellent three-course meal for two at the
best restaurant in Katowice, in southern Poland, costs $11.

    For the independent visitor eager to get out of the capital,
the best way is to rent a car. If you don't want to drive, hire
a driver as well. The cost should be no more than $100 for a
full day, and in some places half as much. In Prague a former
Central Committee limousine complete with driver can be had for
$6 an hour.

    English is now the most widely spoken second language
throughout the bloc, so it is generally easy to find a driver
who can understand you. But don't expect to find rural folk who
speak English. And pack a lunch, since you cannot count on
anything being available in most rural areas. A spare can of
gasoline in the trunk is a wise precaution.

    Even if you have no intention of leaving a country's
capital, tote along a few basic supplies. If you want to read
a book in your own language, bring it with you. If you plan to
record the visit with your camera, bring film. If you are used
to smoking mild cigarettes, bring them. If you plan to do a lot
of walking in new shoes, pack some bandages. All these things
are available -- but not everywhere and not always.

    Even more valuable is a healthy stock of patience. Things
still work slowly in Eastern Europe, and despite last year's
revolutions, the bureaucracy remains cumbersome and frequently
uncaring. Too often, petty officials think that a routine
administrative procedure, such as changing money, is a favor.

    Apart from the well-trod tourist trail around the bloc,
which leads to such places as the Ghetto Memorial in Warsaw,
the Old Town Square in Prague and the neo-Gothic parliament
building on the banks of the Danube in Budapest, the cities
have some surprising things to offer. Even the region's grim
industrial agglomerations are worth seeing, if only to judge
for yourself how badly communism failed.

    You can listen to good jazz in Warsaw, take in a performance
at what is possibly the best puppet theater in the world in
Prague, and go to an opera in Budapest for about what it would
cost for an intermission drink anywhere in the West. In Cluj,
the capital of the medieval kingdom of Transylvania in Romania,
three decades of Ceausescu misrule have emptied shops and
condemned people to a dreary life in ill-lighted, poorly heated
apartments. But the Ceausescu era did not kill the arts. At a
recent Rachmaninoff concert performed by the Cluj Philharmonic
Orchestra, the pianist was superb. Cost: less than $1.

    For those who want to take home more than snapshots, each
country has something special. It is fun browsing through art
shops in Poland and pottery and glassware stores in
Czechoslovakia. The Hungarian state record company presses
high-quality classical records that can be bought for about
half of what they would cost in the West. Hungarian wine is
also worth the money, as is Bulgarian. In the villages west of
Cluj, delicately embroidered tablecloths are sold for the
equivalent of a few dollars.

    But by far the best things to take home are memories of a
way of life that still exists in only a few places in the West.
When has anyone there last seen a horse and cart on a four-lane
expressway? Or oxen tilling a field? Or a Gypsy asleep at the
reins, rolling down a main road?


____________________________________________________________
TOURIST TIPS


    1. Set out with confirmed hotel reservations.

    2. Reserve tables at the best restaurants.

    3. If you head to a rural area, pack a lunch.

    4. If you drive, bring a spare can of gasoline.

    5. Bring your own books, bandages and film.