Berlin: The Twain Shall Meet

Berliners are forever finding new ways to frustrate Communist rules and punch holes in the ugly Red Wall. The latest stunt is a lot more expensive than leaping over barbed wire but a lot safer than dodging Vopo bullets. All it takes is a holiday train ticket to another Iron Curtain country.

Many Communist regimes are hungry enough for hard Western currency to relax travel restrictions and look the other way when East and West Berlin families gather for reunions counter to East German rules. When the night train from East Berlin pulls into Budapest's Keleti Talyaudvar (East Station), the platform scenes are moving replays of those that took place over the Christmas holidays in Berlin itself. Sweethearts fall into soundless clinches; old people weep as they see their grandchildren for the first time.

On the Lake. Berliners get together everywhere from the sunny Black Sea resorts of Bulgaria and Rumania to the forested Tatra Mountains of Czechoslovakia. But the favorite rendezvous is Hungary's Lake Balaton, a narrow, 48-mile-long "inland sea" just 56 miles from Budapest. A renowned Central European watering spot since the days of the Romans, Balaton is a pleasant place to visit even without the added incentive of reunion. Its delicate wines—such as the Badacsony szurke barat (Grey Friar)—are eminently sippable, and the shallow, turquoise-blue lake, ringed with breezy cafes and villas, has a bright, Mediterranean air about it. Of the 40,000 Western tourists who visited Balaton last season, 60% were Germans.

Though the current Communist fiction has it that no visas are required for citizens of Soviet bloc nations, it is not easy for East Germans to get out. Prospective tourists must get permission from their local police, and since individual travel is allowed only when the tourist has a specific invitation, most East Germans travel in officially organized groups, stay in shabby, second-class hotels. This permits Walter Ulbricht's hard-eyed functionaries to ride close herd on them, makes meeting in hotel rooms risky. But the twain meet anyway—on beaches and volleyball courts, in parks and restaurants.

On the Rush. And when East German tour guides get nasty, they often find their Bulgarian or Hungarian opposite numbers siding against them. A recent visitor to Varna heard a Bulgarian tourist official chew out an overofficious East German guide. "Leave the guests in peace," he snapped. "You can do what you want in your own country, but this is our country, our beach and these are our guests."

For all this seeming solicitude, there are dangers involved in reunions behind the Curtain. Many West Germans try to smuggle their relatives out at the end of their vacations and often get arrested in the process—14 in 1962 and three in Hungary alone last year. East Germans seen consorting with "Western agents" can lose their travel privileges and even face trial. But the reunions continue. Last November Czechoslovakia opened her borders to West Germany, and already plans are being laid by thousands on both sides of the Wall. "I'm jammed with bookings for Easter in Prague," said one travel bureau owner last week. "The rush is on."