I've posted some of the various buildings we see each day in our neighborhood and on our walk to the girls' Hungarian school down the street. The contrasts are significant. Some very nice Western-style Euro apt bldgs are going up, but these are rare.
Pic 1 About 100 year old house in disrepair
Pic 2 New 5+ yr old apt bldg
Pic 3 Tearing down old bldg to put up new
Pic 4 Over 100 yr old Szeged train stn
Pic 5 Under construction - new apt bldg looking out Sarah's window
Pic 6 Larger grocery store
Pic 7 Our favorite corner grocer
In this world of great change we live in, it is so interesting to see how fast some things change, while others stay the same here in Szeged.
In terms of economics, Hungary has been riding many waves since the fall of Communism in 1990. In 2004, the country joined the European Union with big fanfare from up above (Budapest capital leadership), but the average citizen has not received much benefit.....yet? In 2006 a huge scandal was leaked in which the socialist government was hiding its federal deficit problems, to the tune of 3x what they had been telling the populace before they got re-elected!
Meanwhile, prices of most everything have increased significantly. Utilities, bread, milk, all staples up 25% in cost at least, while salaries went up maybe 10%, and worse is that some have actually received less salary based on cost of living, including state-employed doctors (it's a "government" job here for most doctors!).
For us, with the $ as our basis for salary, it is even more "interesting" converting to Hungarian forint. A bad scene, indeed. We arrived in 2003 getting about 225 forints for our $. Now we get about 160. This is a 35% decrease in 5 years. Yikes.
