King of Tabs Crowns King of Pothotles

Budapest residents don't need to be reminded that the average road is as cratered as the surface of the moon. Now the champion of the Hungarian gutter press is championing the cause of the Hungarian gutter. Blikk claims to have found the "king of all potholes," on Mexikói út. At 192cm long and 13cm deep, the monster kátyu is at least big enough to bury the average supermodel in - and certainly capable of breaking a Trabant's axle. Readers are being invited to e-mail the newspaper if they can find an even bigger pockmark in the city's tarmac.

The pothole hotline set up by Road Management and Co-ordination Directorate as a typically cosmetic solution to the problem received only half as many calls in February as in the previous month, RMCD spokesman Tibor Tóth told Blikk. "We have filled loads of holes," he said, adding enigmatically, "but we do potholes ourselves, too." So there it is. Our roads are in safe hands.

To further their research, Blikk sent a reporter to survey a stretch of Route 35 in Hajdú-Bihar county (as punishment for what is anybody's guess). He reportedly counted 117 potholes in a one kilometer section or the highway near Pród.

Regardless of the provincial pothole problem, 46% percent of calls to the RMCD's hole-hotline are in relation to Budapest streets, and Pest county is at the top of the national league, attracting 14% of complaints. Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén, one of Hungary's poorest regions, only contributed 5% of calls. Statistically-minded readers will probably guess that this disparity might be due to the fact that a hell of a lot more people live in Pest, and not because roads the north-eastern hills of Hungary are immaculate. But it could just as easily be because less metropolitan types have the nouse to know there's no sense in pissing into the wind.