Richard Bassett is no ordinary journalist. An accomplished musician with a doctorate in architectural history, he is also a gourmet whose appetite is not limited to food and drink. Irrepressibly sociable, he has a remarkable talent for making friends with almost anyone he stumbles across. He is a dedicated observer of people and things, whom no detail escapes.

In this book, he takes the reader on what at times seems an aimless ramble around various locations in central Europe. Yet beneath the apparently frivolous surface lurks a purposeful and sober commentary on the changes that took place in the area during the final decade of the Soviet empire.

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