Word: blocs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
...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...
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...
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...
Gypsy wagons rolling down a main road, plows pulled by oxen, and other Bruegelesque scenes lend charm to Romania, Hungary and the rest of the East bloc. But be prepared for inconveniences and overcrowding...