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 Visitors
who refer to Hungary as a Balkan country risk getting a lecture on how
this small, landlocked nation of just over ten million people differs
from "all those Slavs". Hungary was likened by the poet Ady to a "river
ferry, continually travelling between East and West, with always the
sensation of not going anywhere but of being on the way back from the
other bank"; and its people identify strongly with the West while at the
same time displaying a fierce pride in themselves as Magyars - a race
that transplanted itself from Central Asia into the heart of Europe.
Any contradiction between nationalism and cosmopolitanism is resolved by
what the Scottish expatriate Charlie Coutts called the Hungarian "genius
for not taking things to their logical conclusion". Having embarked on
reforming state socialism long before Gorbachev, Hungary made the
transition to multi-party democracy without a shot being fired, while
the removal of the iron curtain along its border set in motion the
events leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The end of Communism has
hastened the spread of glossy western capitalism, and on arrival in
Budapest your first impressions will be of a fast-developing and
prosperous nation. However, there is another side to post-Communist
Hungary, and beyond the capital and Lake Balaton living standards have
fallen sharply amongst many people, for whom the transition to democracy
has brought very mixed blessings indeed
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