You Can Check Out Anytime You Like ...

In my travels around Central and Eastern Europe the past three decades, first as a journalist and later as a travel writer, I’ve stayed at a lot of hotels in the region.

Since the fall of Communism in 1989, the number of lodging options has exploded. Big hotels, small hotels, pensions, B&Bs, Airbnbs, hostels – basically anything you’d find anywhere else, you’ll find here. And the standards have risen dramatically.

But I still have a soft spot in my heart for those big, purpose-built Communist-era high-rise hotels.

It may not be obvious now, but if you happened to be traveling through any city of any size in Central and Eastern Europe before 1989 and looking for some action – and by this I mean a meal, some drinks, and maybe a bar or club – chances are the only place in town you’d find it would be at the city’s central, state-run hotel.

You could always tell these places by their very consciously Socialist names, such as “Mir” (Peace) or “Družba” (Friendship) -- or grand city names like “Moskva” or “Riga.” They not only had the best rooms in town, they often had the finest (or at least most expensive) restaurants and bars. Many also had risqué nightclubs, usually referred to as “gentlemen’s clubs,” with names like the “Black Cat,” though these were usually as uninviting as their Western counterparts.

Back then, the hotels were often operated by a state-controlled hotel chain with an outwardly tourist-friendly name hiding what was, in fact, a cheerless arm of the country’s Interior Ministry or Communist Party. Russia’s state-run "Intourist" travel agency was the model, but all of the smaller countries had their own versions: "Čedok" (in Czechoslovakia), "Orbis" (Poland), and so on.

It’s not immediately obvious why the party and state-security apparatus would take such a keen interest in running hotels until you consider the fact that these places were tremendous moneymakers for the regimes. They could charge for the rooms and meals in hard currencies (mainly, at the time, U.S. dollars or German marks) and had a captive clientele of relatively well-off foreigners to whom they could market their off-the-books services like prostitution and money-changing. There was simply too much cash floating around to pass up.

This nexus of party bosses, state-security types, local hustlers, and Western businessmen usually lent the hotels a sleazy vibe. In that earlier post on the comings and goings at Prague’s Intercontinental Hotel in the 1980s, I describe the hotel's lobby as a funk of stale Marlboros and knock-off perfume. The place was filled with grubby-looking money-changers and attractive female “law students” relaxing over a drink at the bar. It was depressing but -- admittedly – pretty absorbing theater.

In the aftermath of the anti-Communist revolutions in Central & Eastern Europe in 1989, these hotels have tended to fare poorly. The state-run chains have mainly been broken up and sold off to private (often foreign) investors. Some of the bigger, better-placed properties are thriving, but many of these admittedly ugly high-rises are struggling to compete with a new generation of smaller hotels, boutiques, and private offerings marketed through sites like Airbnb.

This post is a collection of photos of some of my favorite Central and Eastern European hotels as they’ve appeared in the past 10 years or so that I've been writing guidebooks.  I’ve included a bit of location and other info in the captions. (Scroll past the map to find more photos.)

I hope you enjoy these as much as I do.