Ticket to Latvia: A Journey from Berlin to the Baltic

Although books about Eastern Europe tend these days to become outdated even as they are being written, the British author's journey, related with delightfully subtle wit, has period charm. A lone traveler making his way from the Federal Republic across the Berlin Wall to the DDR, on to Prague, Cracow, Riga, Vilnius and Leningrad, Tanner, a one-time Anglican seminarian and now a correspondent in Belgrade, seems not to have detected signs of the ferment about to erupt. He found the mainline DDR folk ``pronouncedly bourgeois''; that the Czechs ``neither learn nor forget anything''; that the Poles are enterprising at fleecing the Western tourist; that in Vilnius and Leningrad, even with Intourist to take over the burden of arranging his accommodations, his hotels proved to be ``dumps.'' The main interest in the book, however, is in the history Tanner relates, especially about unfamiliar Lithuania. (Sept.)