Euro-free Europe: Heading east for bargains, old-world charm

Leave it to an upstart airline sowing its post-Soviet-era oats to redefine the word "discount."

With the weak dollar and strong euro blowing the medieval roof off prices in countries such as France and Italy, I'd been thinking a lot about Eastern Europe when a notice popped up in my inbox from Slovakia-based SkyEurope.

The airline offered to whisk travelers from London, Paris, Rome and Amsterdam to Budapest, Bratislava, Krakow and Prague. The deal: tickets for 7 cents.

Working my keyboard like the lever on a slot machine, I punched in some dates, and hit the jackpot — two seats on a flight from Amsterdam to Budapest.

You can guess what happened next. With taxes and a $6.50 "transaction fee," the total came to $52.19 per ticket. Not exactly airfare for pennies, but still a bargain, considering British Airways was quoting $146 and the train takes 20 hours.

It was just what I needed to jump-start a trip I'm beginning this week into Hungary, and Romania and Bulgaria, the European Union's two newest members.

For adventure-seekers looking for an escape from $5 cups of coffee and hordes of tourists, these and the other ex-Communist countries are the final frontier for European budget travel.

Things are changing fast, but for now, there are enough cultural differences to leave you feeling as if you're not in Kansas anymore — or Paris or Rome for that matter — and enough 21st-century mod-cons to make travel easier than it's ever been.

Euro- free Europe

Remember Europe before the euro when you had to switch currencies as often as you changed countries? That's the way it still works in most of Central and Eastern Europe.

Even though many of the countries are now members of the EU, a move that boosts foreign investment and makes travel easier, most haven't yet adopted the euro as their currency (Slovenia is the exception) — a separate process that depends on budget deficits, interest rates and inflation.

The trade-off is that things still cost less than they do in Western Europe, and the dollar still buys more.

I'll be paying in Hungarian Forint, Romanian Lei and Bulgarian Lev, but unlike years ago, there are plenty of ATM machines and lots of hotels, shops and restaurants take credit cards.

Communication is easier. I've tried teaching myself some Romanian. It comes out sounding a little like Italian with a mouthful of mush. So I feel better knowing that English has replaced Russian in the schools, and most people under 30 speak enough to help out a traveler.

Everyone has cell phones and e-mail. I used the Internet to book a flight on Romania's Air Tarom and rooms in family owned guesthouses, private homes, hostels and hotels. Bloggers offered some of the best tips. Postings on VirtualTourist.com and TripAdvisor.com yielded lots of lodging suggestions that I didn't see in guidebooks.

Embracing capitalism

No-frills airlines are the Greyhound buses of Eastern Europe. Getting around is faster and cheaper with Sky Europe, Wizz Air, Ryanair and others adding flights from London, Paris, Amsterdam and Rome. (see www.flylc.com for a list of who flies where).

Enterprising locals are embracing capitalism. Forget those Cold War images of concrete high-rises and abandoned factories. Think frescoed monasteries, ancient castles, modern cities and restored medieval towns.

It's true that the secret is out on many destinations. Prague and Budapest are flooded with tourists. Europeans flock to Bulgaria's Black Sea coast and Montenegro instead of the pricey Italian beach resorts, and Croatia is on everyone's radar.

I'm happy to be getting to Romania while Adam Marius still rents rooms for $25 in the old walled city of Sighisoara in Transylvania. He speaks English and built a Web site showing the four new rooms and bathrooms he built next to the family home in the birthplace of Vlad Tepes, the 15th-century Romanian prince known as Dracula.

Entrepreneurs such as Nicolae Prisacaru, in the farming village of Vadu Izei near the Ukraine border, offer inexpensive travelers' services.

He heads up a community effort aimed at introducing visitors to traditional village life in the rural Maramures, a forested corner of Transylvania where locals live and work much the way they have for centuries.

I hired Nicolae as my guide for two days at $30 a day plus gas money. He's arranged to pick me up at a train station, and booked rooms for me in two guesthouses — one a traditional wooden farmhouse owned by an artist who paints religious icons on glass — for $25-$30 a day per person, including meals.

The Gypsies of Sliven

Of course, low prices alone don't make a destination worthwhile.

I'm happy with my $50 room in a family owned hotel in Eger, Hungary. But I'm going there to soak in the thermal baths and sip the Bulls Blood wine sold from cellars tucked into hillside caves.

In the Maramures, I'll explore hand-built wooden churches, visit blanket weavers, and maybe hitch a ride into town on a farmer's horse-drawn wooden cart.

The journalist in me is looking forward to a visit to the Bulgarian mountain town of Sliven. There I hope to meet traveling sock saleswoman Diana Beleva to whom I loaned $25 through Kiva (www.kiva.org), a San Francisco Web-savvy nonprofit that pairs individuals in the U.S. and elsewhere with entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Diana and others whom Kiva helps in Sliven belong to a minority group called Roma. We know them as Gypsies.

Originally thought to have come from Egypt, the Roma (Sanskrit for "man" or "husband") arrived in Turkey around 1068 as lower-caste refugees forced out of India by Islamic armies. They made their way into Eastern Europe in the 14th century. Some became slaves. Others traveled from town to town looking for work as coppersmiths, entertainers or bear-tamers.

Most Roma today are settled, but segregated into poor neighborhoods called mahalas. They face job discrimination, some turn to stealing, but many more would like to find work.

Helping to make that happen is American Peace Corps volunteer Greg Kelly. He helps arrange the Kiva loans through REDC Bulgaria, a microfinance venture sponsored by Hungarian-American businessman George Soros and the University of Wisconsin School of Business.

Through Kelly and REDC, Kiva has linked hundreds of "lenders" like me with Roma trying to make a living. There's Idriz Akiof, 64. He lost his job in the state-run light-bulb factory after the fall of Communism. Now he owns his own barbershop where haircuts cost $1.30. Todor Beleva, Diana's brother, plans to use $750 in new working capital to expand a firewood-delivery business he runs with his wife, Silvia.

Most tourists who come to Sliven head into the mountains for the hiking trails and mineral springs. I'll be touring socks stalls and barber shops, and, of course, looking forward to my stay in a $40- a- night Bulgarian guesthouse with built-in wooden wardrobes, woven carpets and a tavern that serves roasted lamb and rabbit.

Carol Pucci's Travel Wise column runs the last Sunday of the month in Travel. Comments are welcome. Contact her at 206-464-3701 or cpucci@seattletimes.com.