more castles

Continuing the recent theme of visiting nice places about the country, ladies and gentlemen I give you Bory Var – (Bory Castle) And a more extraordinary place you will be hard pressed to find anywhere. Situated on the outskirts of Szekesfehervar (sp?) it is a hidden gem.

The story goes like this. This fella, Bory, a sculptor, decided that literally a man’s home is his castle and so he built one from out of his own home, in his summer holidays, it took him forty years. Turrets, courtyards, gardens, arches a gatehouse, ramparts galleries and even tha odd flying buttress all lovingly assembled and harmoniously creating a really tranquil, unique place to visit. What an inspired bit of lunacy!

The place is lovely, you can explore all over and there are art exhibits paintings and sculptures in every nook and cranny and there are a LOT of nooks and crannies to explore. You can climb the towers, run on the battlements or chill in the statue packed gardens.

Here is an overdramatically scored home video to illustrate.

World Heritage site visited, thumbs up given.

Recently visited the village and castle of Holókő about an hour from BP

Jolly nice castle, proper ruin, on a hill, you can walk around a bit for a small fee and they have the obligatory ‘scenes’ recreated to show life in the castle in it’s heyday.

They have a resident knight chappie who mans the ancient weapons stall and you can try your hand at archery or axe hurling or just try on the knights garb for a few hundred forints.

Wierdly the dummies in the recreated scene were quite obviously acquired from a fashion retail outlet so all the women in the scene were six foot tall and stunning and all the men were strangely androgenous and hairless. Great place though, strongly recommend it, lovely fresh air and great views.

The village is a world heritage site, it is a bit contrived and in places seems to be more concerned with making money from tourists than preserving the life of a 17th century village. For example the houses actually date from the early 20th century and the church is from 1889, and practically every preserved house is a handicrafts shop. It is a nice spot though, originally the home of the  Palóc people (who are carrying a taint of ginger by all accounts) and  they  do fantastic soup.

Soup is very important.

the 7 circles of hell

here is a joke i was told recently by a magyar.

satan and bielzeebub are taking a tour of the boiling cauldrons of hellfire one day,

first they come to the pot full of russians. there are two huge demons with machine guns standing guard. Satan notes to Bielzi that the guards are there in case the russians try to escape. they are shot to bits as soon as they try to climb out of the bubbling lava.

the next pot contains germans. but there are no guards, ‘where are the guards’ asks satans mate, ‘look there ‘ says satan directing attention to a sign which reads ‘ HALT!’ he continues, the sign is enough to ensure compliance, the Germans are a very orderly bunch.

finally they come to the pot full of hungarians, the devils sidekick looks for the guards, but sees none, he looks for a sign but sees none. in fact he can’t see any security measures at all. ‘ great deciever, ‘ he says’ i do not understand, what is to stop these Hugnarians from escaping eternal damnation in the fires of hell?’

Lucifer smiles wryly. ‘ we do not need security for these Hungarians ‘ he giggles. ‘WHEN ONE TRIES TO ESCAPE THE TORMENT, THE OTHERS PULL HIM BACK!’

Some sad but true facts about Hungary

everybody who can evades their tax as much as possible. this amounts to about 60% of the tax paying public.

the black economy is estimated to be up to 40% of GDP

every company pays minimum wage where possible then tops it up under the table. including reputable multi nationals. the reaason they do it is becasue if they were 100% legit they would not be able to do business. every 1 euro paid in salary costs the comapny about 2.4 euros.

you can, and many do bribe a copper to make speeding, drunk driving or even more serious offences go away. this is considered to be the normal way of dealing with things, i personally know several hungarians who have a police contact who can make trouble vanish.

around 25% of Hungarians paid for their driving licence..i.e. bribed the instructor….it does show in the quality of driving, but the roads are so bad anyway that it is hard to tell if it is inompetence or brilliance in the face of terible surfaces

the only time effective way to get permission from any public office in any kind of reasonable time frame is to grease palms. doing things the legit way takes up to 4 times longer and will rgularly result in ‘lost’ paperwork as the civil servants only seem to work on what they are paid to work on

even though there is a free national health service giving a bung to doctors nurses and other health professionals is common practice. current rates for a new baby , doctor : three hundred quid, midwife, one hundred fifty. standard visit to a clinic for a test thirty quid.
(this more than anything else disgusts me)

it is commonly accepted that being a politician is an accaptable way to aquire money, from baksheesh of course. sources tell me that though they dislike politicians stealing they would do exactly the same in their position

it is highly probable that a very large percentage of EU funds received by Hungary were/are misapropriated. skimming off the top, before the work has even been comissioned is so rife that the average hungarian though realising this is wrong accepts it completely.

the average hungarian while thinking that all of the above is wrong is at best complicit and at worst an active recipient of all of the above. there pervades a sense of hopeless acceptance and no will at all to stand up and protest

Hungary is joint 47th on the list of most corrupt nations, it is a widely told joke that they paid someone to be that high.

So , you think you have got it bad?

Here in Hungary the PM just resigned after a disasterous six months where the economy has had to be bailed out twice by the IMF and it looks like a third time will be requested shortly as all that money has now gone.

inflation runs officially at 3.7% though in reality the average home has seen the cost of living rise by over 30% in less than a year.

Unemployment is at 9.5% and rising, it is forecast to reach 11% by the end of 2009.

for a country of 9.8 million less than 3 million are taxpayers, there are more than 2 million adults of working age not working for one reason or another.

The economy is expected to shrink by between 3.9 and 7,3% this year.

No economic recovery is forseen before 2011 at the very earliest and some expect it to be as far as 2013

when the last pm resigned his popularity was at an historic low of 18% the new nominee currently is riding high in the polls with a popularity of just 8%…let me repeat that 8%!

he is promising to fix the country’s woes by cuts of 600 billion forints from..get this: health care, pensions, raising the pensionable age, child support, maternity benefit, disability benefit and last but not least raising taxes…again,

The current basic income tax rate here is 37.5%, VAT is 23% plus various hidden taxes which bring the total tax burden to around 70% of income. on top of this business taxes are crippling and the cost of employing someone means that the employers contribution to tax and social benefits amounts to DOUBLE the amount paid to the employee, gross.

53% of Hungarians have loans and mortgages in foreign currencies, the forint has slipped against the main currencies by between 30 and 45% in less than a year, there is a very real possibility that mass defaults will commence in the spring.

widespread civil unrest is expected very shortly, mass rallys are planned for april 5th.