Andrea Fazzari
This month, four Eastern-bloc countries will join the European Union. On a drive from Warsaw to Budapest, Jason Harper finds a culture eager for what's ahead
I'm sitting in a little wine-and-coffee bar in Warsaw, listening to Polish conversations burble all about me, drinking Rioja, and talking with Zbigniew Rytel, a local TV journalist and a friend of a friend. The space is packed, and the two of us are penned around a small, wobbly table. Zbigniew is telling me why many Poles support the Iraqi war. After kicking the Socialist habit 15 years ago, he says, his countrymen are disinclined to agree with anything perceived as left-leaning.
I'm trying to listen, but table after table of impossibly attractive people is distracting me. This isn't what I was expecting from Warsaw. I thought that I would encounter a gray, grim place still nursing a post-Communist hangover. But no, the Polish capital is offering ribald menus, beautiful faces, and a Monday night hotter than any weekend. Earlier in the evening Zbigniew and I ate at Sense, an Asian fusion restaurant co-owned by a local actress. It too was jammed elbow-to-elbow, with twentysomething professionals downing fruity martinis and wasabi-encrusted steaks. The menu at Sense listed appetizers as FOREPLAY, entrées under HARD-CORE, and desserts as HAPPY ENDINGS. ("It isn't exactly the old country anymore," Zbigniew says.) Welcome to the post-post-Communist world, once home to the Socialist Party, now home to socializing and parties.
The country has reason to play. Like the neighboring Czech Republic and Hungary, it is celebrating two auspicious occasions in 2004: the 15th anniversary of the end of Communism, and, this month, its induction into the European Union. I'm here because I want to see these countries' distinctive personalities before prices and attitudes change with the currency. Much has already been transformed: drab Soviet-era blocks now sparkle with color, poor restaurant service has been replaced by white-glove niceties, and state-run hovels have been leveled to make room for rising design hotels. In this moment caught between fast-moving epochs, I'm curious about what has changed—and what hasn't—since Communism ended, so I've devised a five-day trek through Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary.
Less than 20 years ago, there was an air of mystery and menace about Eastern Europe. Any Soviet-allied country had a repellently fascinating allure, like an evil empire straight out of a James Bond movie. But in 1989the threat, if not the intrigue, suddenly imploded. The Velvet Revolution transformed Czechoslovakia; Hungary dismantled its border fence with Austria; Poland's General Wojciech Jaruzelski stepped down soon after the country elected its first non-Communist prime minister. Russia stood alone, and a once-closed society began to open its doors to the world.
It's late, but Zbigniew says he wants to show me one more place: Klubokawiarnia, an underground club in the literal sense. We walk down an alley off a deserted street, find the unlabeled door, pass the bald, scowling doorman, and descend two flights of stairs to the subterranean space. The crowd—young, tattooed, and hipper-than-thou—are all smoking American Spirits and nodding their heads to trip-hop. Zbigniew motions to the surging dance floor. "I was twenty-seven in 1989," he says. "We worried about ideology and surviving. My son is eighteen; his generation is concerned with being rich and happy. And, of course, with looking cool."
I spend the next day wandering around, viewing Warsaw's design eccentricities. Because it was systematically razed by the Nazis in revenge for the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, the city is an architectural hodgepodge, some neighborhoods rebuilt in the old style, others erected hastily using leftovers. But many relics of the Communist regime still stand, such as the 42-story Palace of Culture and Science, which rises from the center of town like a massive sentry tower. An all-too-representative example of dull Socialist architecture, this "gift" from Stalin was completed in 1955. Today it's generally abhorred, and the huge neon m&s sign sitting on its lower façade doesn't help much. I begin to feel hemmed in and return to my hotel, eager to plot my route for the trip ahead.
By 7:30 the next morning, I'm on the road for the 320-mile drive to Prague. I've been told by friends to expect an eight-hour trip—long for the relatively short distance. I soon see why. The EU's inductees are expected to improve their infrastructures, but the Poles have much work to do. The two-lane roads are narrow and packed with semitrucks and impatient motorists. Overtaking slower vehicles while swerving into oncoming traffic is the rule, and you must slice crisply back into the right lane among other autos pulling the same maneuver. I've attended several race car-driving schools, and the art of sudden acceleration and heavy braking that I learned there is not out of place on these roads.
Happily, I'm driving a Volkswagen Touran, a four-door people mover with a gutsy four-cylinder engine and manual transmission. The size of one's engine establishes hierarchical rank on these two-lane roads, with Audis and BMW's bullying the weaker autos. My favorite cars are the Communist-era Polski Fiats, cartoonish chest-high econoboxes that take up half a lane. They hug the very edge of the road, the better to allow everyone else to pass. The countryside is flat and modest, as if afraid to call attention to itself. Only spindly, leafless trees break up the horizon, arranged in rows of living fences. Brick farmhouses slump on the edges of fields; in the villages one-story houses hunch together in uneven heights, like schoolchildren on class-picture day. The towns have names like Meszcze and Ostrzeszów, consonants sloughed atop consonants.
The light in the morning and late afternoon is spectral, blurring the edges of buildings. I imagine that this is a land outside of regular time, on break from the fast-moving worlds of technology and media. It doesn't seem so far-fetched: at one point I pass a stoic-faced farmer turning his earth behind an iron plow drawn by a swaybacked old nag. I wave, but he gives no response. I stop for a late lunch at Bar Kubus, one of Poland's innumerable roadside eateries, and order one of the only two things that I can read on the Magic Marker-scrawled menu: pierogi. (The other item I recognize is a hamburger.) The regulars pay me no mind, nor is the cashier perturbed by my fumbled order. The euro may be coming, but another visitor passing through matters less than not at all.
I have my car insurance and documents ready as I approach the checkpoint between Poland and the Czech Republic. At the border—which is somewhat akin to a large carport with shacks at either end—the guard simply glances at my passport and waves me on to the former Czechoslovakia. This side, of course, looks the same: small towns, poor roads, a line in the mental sand. But then, some 20 miles from Prague, the road wondrously fans out into an enormous freeway. I've pushed the VW to 100 miles an hour and am still getting passed.
I was last in Prague in the summer of 1990 as a backpacker. I'd taken up the offer of a self-styled entrepreneur at the train station who was renting out his apartment in an old Soviet-era building for $6 a night. I clearly remember the carcass of a cat, desiccated and mangy, lying crumpled near the front entrance. That nobody had removed it was a testament to the lack of civic pride at the time. Things have definitely changed—the Prague that rises into view from the highway is more Vegas than Vilnius. New skyscrapers arch their shiny glass backs into the air, vying for the attention usually given to Prague's 100 spires. The feeling of dissociation is complete when I pull up in front of the Hotel Josef's glass façade, near Josefov, the old Jewish Quarter. Designed by Czech native Eva Jiricna, it is all sleek surfaces and hard lines, the lobby a study in urban cool. No dead cats here.
I leave my map behind and proceed to get blissfully lost, eventually finding myself on the hilly streets east of Riegrovy Sady park. It is an old area, with cement walls rainbowed by graffiti. On stone sidewalks and curlicue streets that would have been prime locations for a car chase in a John Frankenheimer film, I catch whispers of the former Prague. After a stop on the hill above the Hlavnitrain station, I descend to the tourist-friendly area near the Charles Bridge. Searching for a pilsner, I find a hard-rocking joint, speed metal grinding out of the jukebox and two large dogs growling and fighting on the floor despite the NO PETS sign. The long-haired clientele make a point of ignoring me.
The sheer number of places to go out in Prague—austere minimalist boîtes, cozy clubs, upscale restaurants, techno dance halls, and plenty of seedy dive bars—is a testament to the fervor with which the Czech Republic has embraced capitalism. I'd planned for a nice dinner, but after spending hours chatting with locals and expats, the desire for a meal slips away. I end up at Ocean Drive, a cocktail lounge where I sit at the bar next to Charles, from London, and his wife, Eliska, a Prague native. They are in their early thirties. "I've been here twelve years," Charles says. "It has become a city of the world. Expats love to complain, but," he says, gesturing to his gorgeous blond wife, "I lack for nothing."
"As a poor little girl growing up," Eliska adds, "I never imagined that I would have an English husband and eat expensive dinners every night."
It's 5 a.m. I'm driving out of Prague on a deserted road. A thick fog smears the light from overhead streetlamps across my windshield. The countryside reveals itself in small patches of farmland before the mist closes in again. Taking a wrong turn at the city of Brno, I end up an hour east. I pass an air museum off the road near the town of Vyskov and pull over beside a chain-link fence guarded by a cranky German shepherd. A sign says the museum is open, although I have no luck summoning anyone by honking the horn. Peering through the fence, I spy, upon a field of cracked asphalt, dozens of snub-nosed MiG fighters, Mil M1-8 helicopters with drooping rotors, and decaying twin-engine bombers. Despite their decrepitude, they still look fierce. This is the Eastern Europe I remember from the Cold War years.
Back on the right road by midday, I pass into Slovakia. The border is again a smattering of buildings and a cursory passport check. Czechoslovakia dissolved into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, ending a federation of 75 years. Slovakiawill be invited into the EU this month, but its capital, Bratislava, is still a gray place with uninspired office buildings and small, sharp-roofed houses. The area outside the city seems even more desolate—miles of flat grassland or brown earth. In one blink-and-you'll-miss-it town, I see dozens of white-haired men and women, all dressed in black, riding bicycles. Many seem to be in their seventies, pedaling slowly down the road in clusters. Then I pass the cemetery where a funeral service has just ended, and I understand.
To the south, the Hungarian border is demarcated by the Dunaj River, which cuts down the center of the Slovakian town Komarno (it's called Komarom on the Hungarian side). A skeletal metal bridge connects the two countries. I pass through this portal and within the hour I'm in Budapest. After I check into my hotel, I walk over the Chain Bridge, with its yawning lions. The first permanent structure to span the Danube and link Buda to Pest, it was destroyed in World War II. At its foot, on the Pest side, sits the Gresham Palace. First built in 1906, this grandiose Art Nouveau structure—which glittered with exquisite stained-glass windows, ornate marble floors, and lacy scrolls of wrought iron—was once the pride of the city, but was badly damaged when the retreating German army blew up the Chain Bridge in 1944. Now, after $134 million in renovations, it will open in August as a 179-room Four Seasons hotel. Marta Palfalvi, the hotel's public relations manager, says locals are excited by the reopening, particularly because of the Gresham Kavehaz, the hotel's café. "It was always a place for the people to gather and talk art and politics," she says. "It will again be open for everybody—a gift to the city."
Up in my room on the other side of the Danube, I lie down. It is Friday night, but I'm exhausted after so many miles. It has started raining. Hard. It would be very easy to close my eyes. Then I sense the thrum of energy on the streets. Because, despite the rain, things are looking very good for Budapest and Hungary. Communism is declawed. The euro is coming to town (good for the locals, bad for my wallet). There is reason to party. I put on my shoes. I'm going to join them.
JASON HARPER has written for Men's Journal, Ski Magazine, and Travel + Leisure Golf.
WHERE TO STAY
Hotel Rialto
DOUBLES FROM $182. 73 WILCZA ST., WARSAW; 48-22/584-8700; www.designhotels.com
Hotel Josef
DOUBLES FROM $240. 20 RYBNA ST., PRAGUE; 420-2/2170-0111; www.hoteljosef.com
Art'otel Budapest
DOUBLES FROM $230. 16-19 BEM RAKPART, BUDAPEST; 36-1/487-9487; www.artotels.com
WHERE TO EAT
Sense Fusion Café
DINNER FOR TWO $50. 19 NOWY SWIAT ST., WARSAW; 48-22/826-6570
Deco Kredens
An Art Deco-styled café favored by the smart set. DINNER FOR TWO $50. 13 ORDYNACKA ST., WARSAW; 48-22/826-0660
La Perle de Prague
French cuisine on the seventh and eighth floors of Frank Gehry's "dancing house." DINNER FOR TWO $90. 80 RASINOVO NABREZI, PRAGUE; 420-2/2198-4160
Arzenal
Shop and dine in this design studio/Thai restaurant. DINNER FOR TWO $38. 11 VALENTINSKA, PRAGUE; 420-2/2481-4099
Dynamo
A sleek, upscale diner. DINNER FOR TWO $25. 29 PSTROSSOVA ST., PRAGUE; 420-2/2493-2020
Voros es Feher
Restaurant and bar with a 130-bottle wine list. DINNER FOR TWO $50. 41 ANDRASSY ST., BUDAPEST; 36-1/413-1545
NIGHTLIFE
Klubokawiarnia
8 CZACKIEGO ST., WARSAW. NO PHONE
Mecca
3 PRUHONU, PRAGUE; 420-2/8387-0522
Ocean Drive
7 KOLKOVNE, PRAGUE; 420-2/2481-9089
