So with that we bid goodbye to another exciting and inspiring year here in Hungary. Following some long-overdue site maintenance that will likely involve some temporary outages, we’ll be back sometime in the first week of January, hopefully with a bit more verve and zeal. That is, if we or anyone else are still around. Seriously. One needn’t be a conspiracy theorist to get the distinct sense that the powers-that-be in this country are actually going out of their way to drive us foreign cosmopolitans away. They – or at least some of them – are pretty open about it. But what’s really striking is the creeping feeling that somehow the grand plan of our Insect Overlords is to get everyone – Hungarian and otherwise – who is even vaguely of an international mindset to clear out.
Take, for example, this recent story on Index about a new program to expedite the issuing of passports. Rather than waiting the standard couple of weeks to get an útlevél, starting in January those Hungarians who really want out can on their way to a new life abroad in just a few hours – provided they pay a fee of between Ft 19,000 and Ft 39,000.
But while the temptation to pack it in is certainly stronger than it was just a year ago, we’re going to stick it out, if only to be a small stick constantly sticking in the eyes of the people who want to see the back of us. And we hope you stick around and help us do it. So until then, Happy Holidays, and don’t let the bastards get you down.
