Eastern Europe

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European Union leaders flatly rejected a new multibillion-euro bailout for Eastern Europe on Sunday, suggesting that additional aid be given to struggling nations only on a case-by-case basis. Germany and the Netherlands also shot down suggestions that Eastern European countries that have seen their currencies plummet be given a quick entry to the euro, which has remained strong against the U.S. dollar and Japanese yen.

CUBA Tour gets personal Alabama-based International Expeditions has begun offering 10-day people-to-people tours of Cuba that start in June. The itinerary includes discussions with botanists at the Soledad Botanical Garden, a visit to the Zapata Wetlands in search of bee hummingbirds and talks with farmers during a trip to a tobacco farm. Havana, the Bay of Pigs, Cienfuegos and other hot spots are part of the itinerary too. Travelers must have proof of legal travel from International Expeditions before they are allowed to board a charter flight from Miami to Cuba (charters are approved a few weeks before departure)

The column by Tad Szulc ("Old East Bloc Hostilities Surface as Threats to Infant Democracies," Opinion, Dec. 17) is the first rational commentary on the events in Eastern Europe since the media released their gush of ooze over the outbreak of freedom. It should be obligatory reading for our national policy planners. The main difference between 1939 and 1989 is the thin blanket of economic prosperity which today keeps Europe's underclass from running through the streets behind beer hall orators and bemedaled generals.

In his mind's eye, Rob Adler Peckerar is sitting with his students on a doorstep in the bustling heart of Eastern Europe. They are in a town, perhaps in Lithuania, perhaps Ukraine. It is summer, and a warm breeze rustles the trees. The students listen, spellbound, to a story written on this very spot a century or more ago in a language that is foreign and yet strangely familiar. And before them, the pre-Holocaust world of Eastern European Jews flickers for a moment to life - rich, lusty, funny, sad and achingly poignant.

Following your excellent coverage of the events taking place in Eastern Europe, especially the escape of the hundreds or thousands of young East Germans from Hungary to the West, I am reliving the moments of joy and euphoria that I felt when I escaped from Hungary to Austria with my brother during the night of Nov. 24, 1956. It is an indescribable feeling that can only be compared to giving birth to a child. I am very proud of Hungary and would like to thank Austria for helping the refugees of Eastern Europe all these years.

The hard-liners who seized power in the Kremlin have long lamented the Soviets' losing control of Eastern Europe. But whether a Soviet invasion is likely remains open to question. Soviet troops have withdrawn or are in process of withdrawing from Eastern European nations, which would make it difficult to launch a military operation.

I have been very pleased with your extensive coverage this year of the rapid changes occurring in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union concerning both domestic and foreign policy. Several times, however, I have been bothered by historical inaccuracies in articles discussing the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine. The idea of limited sovereignty (circumscribed by the U.S.S.R.) in Eastern Europe does not stem solely from Brezhnev's justification of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Working-level representatives of the world's 24 wealthiest industrial countries assemble today in the Belgian capital to decide how to apportion $272 million in aid to the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe. High on the agenda will be whether to add Romania to the list of recipient nations, which now includes Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.

I almost wish Susan Spano had not written "Budapest, So Nouveau" [Unexplored Europe, Oct. 1]. I just kind of hope too many Americans don't discover it. I've had nothing but delightful multiple trips the past several years to Croatia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania and Poland. Having first seen several of these countries as a college student in 1970, it's been a delight to see them now and watch them reawaken. Where so much of Western Europe looks as it does here in the U.S., with vast freeways and mega-malls, to visit Eastern Europe is to step back in time to a slower pace, beautiful, mostly untouched countrysides, and to meet genuinely warm people.

Reversing a policy that it has followed since the Berlin Wall fell, Avis Germany is now letting travelers take cars into most Eastern European countries. Auto Europe, a car rental reservation service based in Portland, Maine, is also permitting its cars to make the trip. Most major rental car companies have not allowed their vehicles to be taken from Western to Eastern Europe since 1989 because of the high rate of theft.

The best travel books, like "On the Road to Babadag," are read for more than the mere travel information they supply: They give readers the true experience of going there. Setting out from his tiny village of Czarny near the Polish-Slovakian border, writer Andrzej Stasiuk heads for that place where Ukraine, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary come together — it's not exactly what comes to mind when we say that somebody's gone traveling in Europe. From there, he goes on to the farther reaches of an obscure Europe and, eventually, the coast of Romania, where the Danube dissipates into the Black Sea near the town of Babadag.

To be honest, I was less enthusiastic than my husband about tacking a jaunt to Kiev onto our already packed 18-day European vacation last summer. But David is a serious amateur historian of World War II and the Soviet Union, a man who has not met a 500-page tome on Joseph Stalin or the Eastern Front campaign that he hasn't devoured. So the invitation from friends spending a year in the Ukrainian capital on a Fulbright Fellowship was irresistible to him, a chance to see firsthand what remains of the Soviet empire as well as the emergence of one of its former satellites.

Today an app may be mightier than a map and far less cumbersome. Here are some apps to tap for Europe that are good for more than one country. Apps that work on iPhone also work on iPad and iPod Touch just as Android apps operate on phones and tablet devices from Motorola (Xoom) Samsung (Galaxy), archos (several models), Acer (several models) and others. Security and networking iHound Tracker: Monitoring and tracking app for mobile devices that will help you meet people and ensure you don't lose your device abroad.

The lights are still on at the Eiffel Tower. They keep ringing up sales at Prada in Rome, and London is getting ready to start partying for about a year and a half, beginning with the April 29 wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey. All in all, you wouldn't know that Europe has suffered through an economic crisis as brutal as ours, because strong social programs in the social democracies we love to visit — England, Italy and France — keep people at work, which is part of the problem.

Binocular Vision New & Selected Stories Edith Pearlman Lookout Books: 374 pp., $18.95 paper I'll confess: I had never heard of Edith Pearlman before reading "Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories," a collection of 34 pieces of her short fiction going back more than three decades or so. That's on me. At the same time, had I been familiar with Pearlman for all those years, I would have been deprived of the great joy of discovering her,...

Tough economic times are providing the backdrop this week as television executives swarm Cannes in the south of France for their industry's largest international sales festival. European broadcasters, like their counterparts in the U.S., have been reeling from a steep fall-off drop in advertising revenue. Even more so than in the U.S., the uncertain economic climate in Europe has meant less money for independent TV producers, who are jostling one another to place their shows on the air. Michael Murphy is a longtime TV executive who launched a channel in Ireland in 2006, only to sell it two years later ?

It's not just chocolate but memories that are made in this genteel company town founded when Victoria reigned. Take the Cadbury Flake, which for many Brits conjures up childhood images of an afternoon at the seaside, with a flaky spear of chocolate stuck into a dripping vanilla cone. Or Cadbury Creme Eggs, so rich and gooey they make your teeth hurt, now as much an Easter tradition in Britain as bonnets, bunnies and ham. Or the Milk Tray assortment, which gray-haired pensioners who remember Cadbury's wartime "Ration Chocolate" buy for their grandkids.

Alight snow came down in Bucharest, covering the mounds next to freshly dug graves, open and gaping in long straight rows. "Here are the fallen," intoned a solemn priest as four men placed a wooden coffin before him on a wobbly trestle. Jacob Stetincu, shot by a sniper, lay wrapped in a thin cotton sheet, wearing a worn blue beret, snowflakes catching in his grayed mustache. After a hurried sacrament, the men nailed the lid shut, carried him to the nearest grave -- his widow struggling to keep up -- and shoveled in the heavy earth.