Bulgaria, The German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Yugoslavia

I've returned to Eastern Europe after three years' absence. As the Berlin Wall collapsed, the Ceausescus were shot in Romania, and Havel's velvet revolution freed Czechoslovakia, I chomped at the bit in New York, knowing I had to wait until the spring to get back to this side of the world. "I'll miss the euphoria, but I'll witness the hard labor of transition," I told myself. And in truth, that transition has proven to be the most painful part of the process.

I'm writing at the midway point of my six-month sojourn. I've made my home base in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria.

Yugoslavia On the plane from Frankfurt to Zagreb, I find myself surrounded by Croatian-American supporters of the right-wing, nationalist Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) which went on to win the first multiparty elections for Croatian parliament. Among 89 U.S. delegates to the HDZ founding conference in Zagreb, two were women. I asked Marija, a 45-year-old woman from Cleveland, why she likes the HDZ. She tells me: "Croatia for me is God's miracle. We must move our Croatia from Yugoslavia — a Communist disaster." She invites me to join them in a day pilgrimage to Modjogorje, the site of a vision of the Virgin Mary. I politely defer, staring at the huge gold cross around her neck.

The HDZ comes out for banning abortion. One of the spokesmen says on TV: "We want women to feel like ladies, not slaves of their john." This rhetoric resonates what I heard from my friend's cleaning woman. She wanted to vote for the Greens, but her husband told her she had to vote for HDZ. "I had to work all these years so we could live, now I'm ready to retire, but I got no pension. I'd like someone in power who will treat me like a lady."

My friend Katarina, a radical feminist, is courted by the Communists. She agrees to run as their candidate. "All parties are full of dirty male politics," she tells me. "I may as well run for one to which I can get elected, and be a feminist voice in government." Ten others from her women's group run as Green coalition candidates. They give Katarina a terrible time about "being manipulated" by the Communist functionaries. She eventually withdraws.The Greens are trounced, and the Communists don't do much better.

The abortion debate is everywhere. The feminists sponsor an International Women's Day forum to publicize their declaration on reproductive rights. A young woman right-to-lifer asks questions I'm familiar with ("How can women be so selfish?") but so politely. Later I ask her if she knows about clinic bombings in the U.S. She acts shocked. I don't believe she's really that naive.

As Yugoslav feminist Vesna Pusic put it, "Why are worries about natality being used as justification for a ban on women's right to decide about their bodies and fertility? Under that mask hides a fundamental and all-enveloping political belief: That individual autonomy and the right to privacy are potentially subversive categories."

Among feminist magazine columnists, the prevalent line is: "I am against abortion but I think it's a necessary evil." This waffling makes me angry. But I know this is a country where most women use abortion as the only birth control method. Birth control pills are hard to come by, although condoms and foam are everywhere. My friends who want diaphragms and cervical caps must travel to Italy or Austria to get them.

Yugoslav abortion clinics are a nightmare that women have learned to tolerate. Lepa, a feminist organizer from Belgrade, tells me she's had three abortions. "Anesthesia? Depends what they've got available that day. The first time I had a local, but they wouldn't give me anything to relax me. The next time, I had gas from which I could barely wake up. The third time I swear they experimented on me with horse medicine." Lepa has become keenly interested in women's self-help. "We'll never get decent services in this disorganized, unresponsive country. No, women have to do it ourselves."

On the playground, Yugoslav boys are always playing soccer and basketball. Girls are usually singing or talking. At their most active, they play Chinese jumprope. My two-and- onehalf-year-old son goes to public daycare. They're obsessed with getting him to eat, to the point of force feeding, "so he can be a big strong boy."

On an overnight train journey from Berlin to Zagreb, I'm alone in a compartment. The Yugoslav conductor, Zvonko, gives me chains with which to secure my door. The next morning, he talks about women: "We have to get rid of Turkish customs. A woman in Serbia spends all day Saturday cooking and cleaning, preparing for Sunday. On Monday, she's dead. I tell my wife, who's a chemist, that on Sundays I'd rather we go for a hike in the mountains and drink tea and eat toast. But she feels she must live up to her standards. German women have a better situation. Everyone in the GDR washes his or her own plate."

German Democratic Republic On a train to Leipzig I meet Klara, a young East German woman who's studying Russian in Moscow. She has returned to the GDR for Easter, the first time since last fall's "revolution." "It was hard to get real news from Moscow TV, despite glasnost," Klara said.

"On November 9, I came back to the dorm after a vacation in Yalta, and my mother called me. 'The wall will come down. We'll be one Germany soon,' she said. 'Stop teasing me, Mama,' I answered. I really couldn't believe it." Klara studied Russian because "that's what was chosen for me when I said I wanted to be a linguist, even though my English is good." Very good, indeed! "But now I hope I can go to Africa, to an English-speaking country, and help children." Like our Peace Corps? "Exactly." How does it feel in Leipzig now? "I can relax more. But I worry because I have no idea what the future could be. How can I make decisions for my life now?"

We pass a freight train full of Soviet tanks. "Are the Russians withdrawing their troops from Yugoslavia, too?" Klara asks. I tell her that Yugoslavia hasn't had Soviet military aid since Stalin and Tito fell out in 1948. She pumps me for the history of Yugoslavia, all about nonalignment, self-management, trade with East and West. "They didn't teach us such a mixture was possible," she said.

In Leipzig, I stay with Gudrun, a mirthful, generous woman who lives in a big, knick-knack filled apartment that reminds me of my brownstone in Brooklyn. Gudrun lives with her two daughters, ages 11 and 12, who tuck me in at night and awaken me at the hour of my choice by kissing me and giggling, in English, "Good morning, Mrs. Jill!" Five years ago, Gudrun got divorced, not long after her cousin Suzanna from West Berlin came to visit. Gudrun and Suzanna fell in love. The GDR gave Gudrun and her kids permission to travel to West Germany for her aunt's 79th and 80th birthday celebrations. "For me, these were — special family reunions — I was free to find my lesbian life!" Once she arrived in West Germany, she was able to get a passport. (Since the West Germans did not recognize the GDR's existence, all those living in the East were considered West German citizens.) "Suzanna and I and our kids travelled to Amsterdam. I was in heaven. Women everywhere, with our cafes and arts."

She and her cousin are no longer lovers, but they still travel together with their kids every summer. Until a year ago, Gudrun was out as a lesbian only when she visited Berlin. But now she's obviously at the center of the action in Leipzig.

Gudrun and her friends deal with the emotional craziness in Germany by making fun of it. We stand talking in a clump, in Leipzig's Markt square, in front of the Renaissance Town Hall, near Bach's house. Suddenly Gudrun shouts to the passersby, "A hundred twenty marks!" Everyone moves nearer to see what we're selling, as all of Leipzig is full of West Germans selling longed-for consumer goods at exorbitant prices. Andrea, another feminist activist, peeks into our plastic bag (filled with leftover sandwiches) and shouts the question, "120 marks for that?" This skit goes on until my stomach muscles ache from laughing. Stern Leipzigers out for a Sunday stroll glare at our irreverence.

Hungary The cult of femininity rules here in Budapest. At a rock concert in support of the Young Democrats, I ask Erszbet, a young nursing student, "How do you feel as a woman?" "I don't feel good because the guys don't behave nicely with the girls. Now they treat women equally, but they don't treat us as females. I'd like to be handled like a girl, not like just another man."

Onstage, the cast from the Rock Theater sings an ironic anthem to freedom: "America, we thought it was a promise. A dream. Sweet dreams goodbye. We missed the train." I go backstage to ask Aniku Nagy, the powerful lead singer, what the song means to her. "We have to find our own road to democracy, not just what we see in American movies." The song has a personal message for her, too — about finding her own voice.

"I was a dramatic actress. My role models were Liza Minnelli and Marilyn Monroe. Now I've discovered rock opera! I did a musical based on 'Yentl.' When I play Yentl, the audience sits very close to me. They don't feel scandalized when she demands to study like only men were allowed to. No, they sympathize with her. I'm very proud that people experience this problem of women for the first time. All human beings have male and female elements. I feel the strong, brave male type in myself. Everyone says this role is good for me. I'm an independent type; for a long time I was alone. Now I got married. My husband is a songwriter who's set the role of Anna Karenina to music for me. Since I got married, I don't keep up my relationship with women friends. I get much more fan mail from girls than boys. One girl calls me every day — I'm her surrogate family."

My young friend Ana, who has met people from around the world through her involvement in the international organization of economics students, tells me: "My Israeli boyfriend is a feminist, but not me. I don't think that men and women are unequal. Women have always worked these past 40 years, and many want to have the choice of staying home. I was in my organization's leadership with three men. I made emotional decisions and they, rational ones. Both are equally important and valid. I can't cook or sew. I will always work, and never work at home. Women have control over their bodies, and we don't need to think of ourselves as having special problems as women."

In the final days of the Hungarian electoral campaign, Ana takes me to a candidates' night in her district of Budapest. All the questions are asked by men. Finally a woman schoolteacher gets up. She prefaces her query with "I'm just a stupid woman..."

I interview Marta, a biophysicist, after a Free Democrats press conference. "I'm not a typical woman," she warns me. "Many people say I'm a man." She invented the Bioptron lamp, which heals leg ulcers. She tried for six years to get it licensed in Hungary. Finally, she got a Swiss license.

"My situation as a woman is special. My mother watched my kids so I could make my invention 24 hours a day. I bring politics into the house. My husband likes it, so we cooperate well. I have quite a balanced and free family life. No one does the housework. A woman comes to clean the house once a week. I can't cook, so we don't eat. My kids eat hot meals at school. At home they take from the fridge if they're hungry. At 5 p.m. I realize I forgot to eat lunch. I don't feel guilty though some say I'm 'a bad woman.'

"I'm very worried about my future, as a strongly identified Hungarian Jew," Marta continues. "We all feel the nationalism of the Hungarian Democratic Forum (which beat the liberal Free Democrats in the parliamentary elections, in part by labeling them 'cosmopolitans' and Jews). We speak about escaping this country if anti-Semitism becomes a fundamental and growing motive."

Bulgaria Bulgaria shocks me. I've experienced shortages in Poland, but conditions in crumbly Sofia remind me more of Cairo than Warsaw. It's not uncommon to find three generations living in a onebedroom apartment in tall, gray housing blocks. Every night the power shuts off, and we grope our way up six flights of stairs in total blackness until I learn to carry a candle in my bag.

In Sofia, we rent a room in a highrise from Dimitra, a stern and forbidding landlady. "Take off your shoes, they're dirty! Don't run the water!" she shouts. She's harshly, obsessively protective of the main income source she has, her flat. She gets less than $15 a month on her pension, so she sits in her kitchen making paper flowers for cash. She tells me she prefers the opposition: "I don't trust them, but at least they're not the communists." When I tell her I'm a journalist, she gets very nervous about all the things she's told me about herself. "Bulgaria has been closed off from the West for years, first by the Turks and then by the Russians," she tells me. That's engendered an intense paranoia. She abruptly unplugs the phone while I'm in the midst of a conversation. Although she doesn't understand English, she's obviously afraid I'm talking politics on the phone.

I spend a few days in Vidin, a city on the Danube, in Bulgaria's westernmost corner, bordering Yugoslavia and Romania. Marina, a translator who works for the dairy industry, tells me "neither the opposition nor the party will change anything for women. Things for us will just get worse." After a few drinks, we start to talk about sex. She has two teenage children. What does she do for contraception? I've obviously hit a difficult subject. "You have to have connections to get an IUD. Russian condoms leak." She's never heard of a diaphragm. I take her to the bathroom for a clandestine showand-tell. Later on, I discover that even health workers in Sofia, the capital have never heard of a diaphragm.

This northern Balkan country has excellent agriculture. If you're persistent you can buy tomatoes, strawberries, cherries, in the height of the growing season. Meat is harder to find. Sugar and tea are impossible. Women stand in long lines for food, alcohol.. .and newspapers printed by the democratic opposition, the coalition called the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF).

The UDF press office in Sofia is filled with men giving interviews and women organizing events. Valentina — a former doctor now working in the press office— arrives with supplies of coffee and cookies. She is active in the new women's organization Naduzda (Hope), one of the 16 organizations in the UDF. After a two-hour talk about conditions for Bulgarian women and children, I'm devastated.

The population growth rate was negative last year for the first time. And, since the democracy demonstrations in November, the abortion laws have been in the process of being reformed. Until now, married women have been allowed abortions only after they have two children. Even then, says Valentina, "official formalities often slow the process down for more than three months, after which abortion becomes dangerous and painful."

"After Chernobyl, a government order made abortion possible for wives and daughters of the petty nomenklatura," Valja comments, tossing her long black hair disgustedly. "Everything runs on that two-class system: Health care, housing, goods, education, work." "Meanwhile, women who need them — and who doesn't with housing and pay as terrible as they are — get what the state calls 'criminal abortions.'" An illegal abortion costs 200 leva, as much as the average monthly wage, 40 times as much as a legal one.

Valja describes a case she saw herself when she worked in a dialysis unit: "A 22-year-old woman from Thliman, not far from Sofia, was divorced with one child. She had a criminal abortion, lost too much blood, had a terrible systemic infection, even swelling on the brain. She came to the hospital. After four operations on four consecutive days, she had a partial hysterectomy. After 40 days, they sent her home, feeling better. But, in fact, she doesn't feel like a woman. Her life was destroyed."

"A husband and wife team did the abortion on that woman. They were arrested by the militia and as far as I know, the punishment was 15years."

Jill Benderly is a freelance writer whose work regularly appears in Across Frontiers, In These Times and New Directions for Women.