Friday, October 9, 2009

Hungary: Twenty Years after the fall of Communism

As part of Euranet's Fall of Communism series, correspondent Nick Thorpe reports on perceptions in Hungary, where economic woes are leading to dissatisfaction with how much has been achieved since the country's peaceful "negotiated transition" to democracy.

Moscow Square in Budapest on a weekday afternoon. People are hurrying home from work, while others are trying hard to find a way of making some cash.
Despite the fine weather, there's a heaviness in the air. Twenty years after the fall of Communism in Hungary, most people seem dissatisfied with what has been achieved.

"I don't miss anything from the 1980s," says a man selling books, "but the problem now is that it’s all about money. If you have work, you don’t have time to go out. If you don’t have work, you don’t have the money to go out."

Twenty years ago, Hungarians ate in a restaurant on average once a week. And they went to the cinema regularly. Now, that's out of the question, except for the richer few.

Read more:
http://www.euranet.eu/eng/content/view/full/34899