|
|
|
|
| News article |
back to newsletter |
| |
 | Budapest travel guide for dummies |
|
So you are at the Ferihegy airport of Budapest and like me you don''t know where to go and where to stay. If you have your own laptop like me, you can start using the open wifi connection at the airport and start looking for an accommodation on www.tobook.com/Hungary/Budapest
The Ferihegy airport is probably the only public place in whole Budapest where you can surf the Internet without using your credit card because for everything else you have to look for your wallet. After checking-in to my hotel, I went in to the city and tried to absorb the local culture, learn their habits and discover their landmarks. Once my retina had captured the image of this city which is divided by the river Danuba, formerly two cities, namely Buda and Pest, I was amazed of my self that there was still something different when you look at the picture of this city and really experience it. I was amazed by what I saw, even captured images by a motion picture would not be able to show you the difference when you are at the top of Gellért Hill (Gellért-hegy).
This article is unfortunately not about the beauty of the location of the city but more about the psyche of its inhabitants in relationship with the rest of Europe. Hungary has among the other EU countries the one of the highest percentage of academics per capita and also the highest number of high-tech patents per capita. I guess the latter one speaks for itself, how much these people are investing in them. So the numbers are good and hence I understood why there were so many men in black suits on my flight to Budapest. They are all like vultures trying to drain on this huge lake of human resources. You wouldn''t blame them anyway once you start breathing the same air. My first notion was that the whole nation was in a depressed state of mind.
One would say that this huge number of academics would also naturally create an environment which would continuously challenge the people with new dynamics. On the contrary, Hungarian experience shows that “happiness” and a dynamic environment do not have to go in sync with each other at all. Sometimes I had the notion that this state was still an unwilling satellite state of Soviet Union. People were looking depressed and were constantly looking for opportunities to get rich as quickly as possible. The reason for “unhappiness” might be related to high taxes. It has one of the highest income tax regimes in Europe. In other words a powerful bureaucracy, that is draining all the energy off from its creative resources in order to keep itself as fat as possible. I couldn''t refrain myself from an image of a soup which was made with fat pigs from the “Animal Farm” (George Orwell) and added the “The Trial” from Kafka into the Hungarian Goulash.
No wonder that this bureaucracy has tried to imprint their own subjects with a high dose of a national identity and is trying to create or hold the Magyar feeling, while they blame the residue of 40 years plan economy for what ever is failing. The “Huns” believe that the EU will save them from their "misery" and possibly also from their identity crisis as well but their misery is cultural and comes deep from inside.
|
|
| |
|
There will be fewer breadcrumbs available for the bureaucracies around the globe, especially now the world economy is accelerating to its “correction” state thanks to the support of failing real estate business, the credit crunch and the long postponed costs of ecology. It shows that the current state of organizing the societies has failed and a multiple catastrophe is just waiting to manifest itself. The bureaucracy around the world has to be tamed and Hungarians should be at the beginning of this line. I still have the hope that these well read people of central Europe will be able to see this act quickly so that not everything will be lost.
By the way, don't forget to make a visit to Gellert Baths while over there, otherwise you will regret like me not having visited. Of course, it could be also a reason for a re-visit. That is what one can call looking at the bright side of things.
|
|
|
| |
|
