BUDAPEST, CONT.

I had come to Hungary and to Budapest in 1997 with those kinds of images in mind, to see an Eastern Europe ravaged by dictators---Nazis, then Communists---a full lifetime of reprisals and loss of freedom until 1989 when the cloud lifted. Tyranny fell silent, the Russian soldiers left. I left Hungary as a reeducated Westerner, gladly leaving my prejudices behind.

Instead of poverty, dismay and long lines at the produce counter, I saw a handsome city of 2.1 million, where the sun peered down through a golden but smoggy sky, while Hungarians in Euro-fashioned dress hustled at lunchtime along the Vaci Utca, a cleanly swept pedestrian thoroughfare, like a miniature Fifth Avenue. And out of speakers blared "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina."

Dress shops, record stores, shoe stores with expensive footwear, shops selling jewelry, flowers and porcelain, book stalls and bakers with sweet-smelling pastries, as western an urban setting that one might find, were all laid out against a backdrop of elegant hotels that flanked the Danube. And this was only Pest, the least charming, business side of the city. Across river, over the reconstructed Chain Bridge, one of a half-dozen rebuilt since the destruction of World War II, lay the Buda hills and the elegant Medieval Castle district, where apartments go for twice the money.

In the eight years that have passed since the Velvet Revolution and Hungary embraced a free market economy, Budapest has become a city on the upswing, preserved in a Victorian splendor, tarnished only by a super pollution, and memories.

"Give me ten guys with scrub brushes and buckets," I thought aloud as we drove past block after block of majestic soot-covered buildings, "and this city would sparkle".

Pollution aside, movie director Alan Parker saw in Budapest's streets reminders of Buenos Aires in the 1940s. So he shot Evita there in 1996. Eva Peron's movie funeral procession went along Alkotmany utca (street) near the spiky-terraced neo-gothic Parliament building, a structure about 1/4 mile long. It proceeded up the steps of the Hungarian National Museum, a neoclassical masterpiece of architecture, and through the front door of the Ethnographic Museum. Polystyrene palm trees Latinized the Museum of Fine Arts and the Square of Hosok.

I traveled with a group of mostly Southern Shrine leaders in a trip through Eastern Europe sponsored by Vantage Deluxe Tours of Brookline, Mass. We were part of what will certainly be more than 300,000 American tourists to visit Hungary this year, according to the Hungarian Tourist Board. We seemed to agree that Budapest, though darkened with soot from soft coal-burning furnaces, yet swept clean by a cadre of street cleaners, is an irreproachable model of tidiness compared with familiar American urban settings.

Broad sweeping squares studded with equestrian statuary mark the terminals of boulevards flanked on each side by three-to-six story buildings constructed in the 19th Century Age of Reform. Heroes' Square is a paved plain that often held 300,000 people. The Socialists would hide the colonnade of horse-mounted knights and kings with bright red banners. On this Spring-like day when we visited, parents and children holding colorful balloons, fed the pigeons, which would sweep here and there when frightened, flying to the top of the Museum of Fine Arts and Exhibition Hall. .One irreverent bird landed on the head of St. Istvan (997-1038).

We drove down Andrassy Street, where 100 years ago, the rich paraded their Sunday best in carriages past fine old mansions, still standing. As we passed a building marked "Andrassy 60", Julianna became uncharacteriscally quiet, then continued: "That was the torturing building of the Communists. If someone was taken to Andrassy 60, you knew what happened. In the cellar of that building, many people died."

So, it did happen. The Communists were there; the Nazis were there, but to see Budapest today is to see it in its elegant Empire style, when it shared with Vienna as the co-capital of Austria-Hungary. Socialist street signs, banners, a four-ton Red Star and statues of Lenin and other Soviet leaders have been warehoused. Occasionally, you'll find, as on the facade of former German Ministry of Defense building, the pock marks of Soviet gun fire from the Gellert (pronounced "GAL-ee-at") Hill, a half-mile south. That building, surprisingly squat and unformidable, sits in the shadow of St. Matthias Church, the Middle Ages centerpiece of the Castle Hill district, perched high above the Danube with a commanding view of Pest (or "Pesht" as it's pronounced locally) and Margaret Island, an auto-free greensward in mid-river.

A Gypsy violinist struck up his rendition of "Jingle Bells" when he saw us coming, a comic touch to our already lighthearted spirits, inspired by the magnificent Gothic sites around us. The Fisherman's Bastion, so-named in honor of fishermen who defended the city thousands of years ago from that particular height, is a marbleized terrace of colonnades and statutes. It saddened us to leave those cobble stoned streets and alleys, lined with colorful shops selling everything from porcelain to the ubiquitous paprika.

That afternoon, below the hill where the Soviet guns fired at the fleeing Nazis, I bathed in the Gellert Baths, the most elegant of several thermal pools scattered throughout Buda. Located in the basement of the old art nouveau Gellert Hotel, the medicinal waters of the Turkish-style bath soothed muscles tired from climbing the steep streets of the Castle District. A Babel of European tongues---French, German, Czech, English, beside the native language---echoed off the high glass ceiling, some wheeling and dealing befitting Budapest's new market-driven spirit.

As Hungary awaits word on its application to join the European Economic Community, signs are positive. Among all the former Communist countries, Hungary ranks first in foreign direct investment, with $13.9 billion being held there in 1996, 30 percent of the old Eastern bloc's total, according to the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe.

In an industrial section of town, uglified by billboards, signs boasted the presence of Mitsubishi, Dr. Jeans, Opel, Samsung, IKEA, Phillip Morris, Esso, Nissan. An item in an Eastern Europe real estate newspaper reported that small outlets of Budapest's Polus Centre shopping mall enjoyed Christmas revenues that were six times higher than usual.

Hungary actually got a head start on reform In 1968, when the Communists allowed limited private enterprise and a decentralized economy. Hungary became the most liberal country of the Eastern bloc, attracting both Eastern and western tourists.

Collective farms are a dim and bitter memory. Strolling through the huge Central Market only a block from the Danube, I saw more fresh produce, fresh meats and dairy products than to be found in any single American supermarket. Free of paper and plastic wrapping, they are a riot of beautiful natural colors, with stacks of vegetables taking on the look of a floral display. There were no lines at the dozens of stalls, made of iron framework in a Victorian building that looks like a railroad shed.

"The younger Hungarian people are more optimistic about their new life than the older ones," said Julianna one evening at dinner, nodding across the table to a grinning Katalin Lefter, 30-year-old product manager for Blaguss Volanbusz, an international travel agency.

Julianna, a tiny wide-eyed woman with bird-like mannerisms who spoke an engaging, broken English ("I speak Hungrish"), said older citizens like herself viewed the departure of the last Russian soldier in 1991 ("We did a little dance!") with a joy tinged with caution. They had been through so many failed five-year plans that theirs is a wait-and-see attitude. They hope the latest boom is not just temporary. Also, they see galloping inflation eating at their pensions, one reason why Julianna, who has a doctoral degree, quit her job as a government chemist and became a tour guide. Her husband and son are architects.

"I survived the war, I survived the revolution," she said somewhat tiredly, but smiled: "My life is much more better."

At night, I stood on the broad promenade outside our hotel, a five-star Marriott, and gazed wonderingly across the quiet Danube at the illuminated facades of the Fisherman's Ramparts, the Chain Bridge, the Citadel and Parliament building and tried to imagine the horrors witnessed there. It was difficult, in such a now-beautiful setting, to think about October 1944, when Hungary's fascist Arrow Cross Party threw Jews alive into the Danube or shot them on its banks. Just a few blocks from this now peaceful setting, thousands of Jews were taken from the ghetto set up by Adolf Eichmann. Most perished at Auschwitz.

Those are memories now. In the evening, couples strolled arm in arm along the paved promenade, reminiscent of the boardwalk at any American seaside resort. Peace, prosperity, calmness prevailed.

Some negative byproducts of the new economic bounty are an increase in crime and flourishing strip-joint businesses. On an otherwise serene night-time meander through the quiet business district, we came upon night clubs in nearly every block, their entrances guarded by four-legged bouncers, bull mastiffs that were muzzled and held on leashes, keeping the peace, "Budapesht" style.

One of them snarled at me as I tried to sneak a peek through the front door.

Then, from around the corner, well-dressed concert goers were leaving the State Opera House after a performance of Der Rosenkavalier. Hungarians love music and regularly celebrate the works of local artists Franz Liszt, Gustave Mahler and Bela Bartok, paying at tops, $25 a ticket.

At 10 p.m., restaurants were full, including the Irish Cat Pub, one of several ex-pat bars. Dining in Budapest I found to be a delight, although I seemed an exception in our group in that I could not get enough goulash. Because of Hungary's history of having elastic borders throughout time, with incursions by Turks, Tartars, Germans, Austrians, Czechs and Slovaks, there are multitudes of flavors. As with the architecture, old and tasteful, you'll never go hungry in Hungary, and hopefully, never again will the people who live there.

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