Back! and NOT in the USSR

 Back from the CET weekend jaunt! In my searches for future Europe jaunts, I came across an interesting article about Europe Off the Beaten Track from Time Mag... from 1979.

The prices are certainly entertaining. I suppose the places still exist, fundamentally. Maybe not the restaurants, but the towns and museums, etc.  Interesting to note, no "eastern" european countries are mentioned (Czech Republic didn't overthrow communism until 1990.) Only 21 years ago! That means that basically any Czech adult that I meet here lived here during communism. It is so interesting to hear them talk about it. Mostly musings so far, but as I get to know my mentor Miroslav I hope to know more about that time period and may have some cool stories to pass on. Miroslav knows how interested I am in contemporary history and has promised to bring in pictures and things.

Also, something I've learned here (and why "eastern" is in quotes) is that Czech Rep., and Hungary (and Poland by extension) are smack in the geographic middle of Europe, thus making them Central Europe. The eastern europe label only came about with communism and control from the USSR, in the East. To make things easier, we "blocked" (haha soviet bloc, yeah?) all of the Central European countries under eastern influence into "Eastern" Europe title... so they prefer the Central Europe title here. Pretty much they didn't choose their former name and they don't want to be associated with it. Pretty cool, huh? Now go back and chuckle at the title of this post.