Lanes into The Past

By JOHN BORRELL CLUJ

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?

With reporting by Veit V. Dengler/Budapest and Gertraud Lessing/Weimar