Sorry for your ex-tooth Parker. (Is there life after extraction?) Maybe you should get a shark jaw implantation. Rotating sets of teeth, smart grow-back function and all.

Oh dear, I seem to be misunderstood. I don't hate Hungary, Hungarians or anything for that matter - life's too short. I do find the attitudes, beliefs and actions of the people here to be unlike anything I found anywhere else. A little background: my wife is ethnically Hungarian. Her parents were deported during WWII to Germany, for helping Jewish families. They survived, but couldn't return. My wife was born in Germany but was classified as a "Homeless Alien". After we met, we moved to the UK, where we lived for 10 years but found tha we couldn't afford to have the kind of lifestyle that we wanted. So we came to Hungary on holiday, liked it, sold our house and moved here, with the aim of becoming self-sufficient. We effectively turned our backs on the Capitalist world as it has nothing to offer us. We both hold Buddhist beliefs BTW.
While we were here on holiday, we were, on the whole, well treated. Sure, we got ripped off, but we were expecting that and I suppose we were willing partners. However, the reality of living here is completely different. When we bought our house, once the sellers realised we were foreigners, the price doubled. The price for renovating it also doubled, and the builder walked off before he'd finished. We went though hell to get simple things like gas, water and electricity installed. But eventually, we got what we came here for. We own our house and land. We grow enough during the summer to feed ourselves for the whole year, including our own wine and food for our geese and chickens. We've just spent a glorious day, making apple wine, outside in the sunshine, watching the swallows, chickens, a buzzard, a pair of owls, and our cats, one of which just had three kittens. Tonight we ate courgettes, fried with garlic and tomatoes, with eggs, followed by a fresh fruit salad of apple, peach, nectarine and grapes - all our own, grown on our plot. And later we went outside to watch the stars, and the International Space Station as it orbitted overhead. That's precisely where our happiness comes from, not from cars, trainers, mobile phone ringtones, lotto, scratchcards, movies or all the rest of the useless product which is peddled to us by the capitalist world. We're not anarchists, or anti-globalists, or terrorists seeking to undermine the western world - we've just identified what we need to be happy and have set out to achieve it as best we can, with the limited resources we have.
Neverthless, we see and hear things we do not like, do not approve of and do not agree with. The Prime Minister and his pseudo-socialist, corrupt bootlickers, who openly lie to the people and promise them milk and honey... tomorrow. And then reverses every single promise. The MSZP have already bankrupted the country and now seem intent on destroying the people to pay for their incompetence and mismanagement. And the people voted them back in for a second term! The opposition are woolly, toothless and ineffective. The media is by and large goverment controlled or influenced. The government takes no responsibility for anything.
Out here in the countryside, it's positively medieval. The local mayor, an ex-communist who is corrupt to the bone, had a gravestone stolen from the local cemetery and made into a coffee table. He just won a bid for EU funding to buy new furniture for the local old people's home, which he's selling to all his friends. He's closed the local kindergarten, and used the money to build 5 new bus shelters at a declared cost of 1 million Ft each. Some bricks and wood - not solid gold. His wife runs the school, and only empoys her friends as 'teachers'. Qualified, intelligent and capable teachers can't get work, as they are not part of the inner circle. The quality of education the children receive is dismal - no foreign languages are being taught at all.
Less than 1km from us lives a triple murderer. He killed two previous wives and another man, and yet he's been let out. He lives with two women who he beats mercilessly and yet no-one can or will do anything about it. My wife is called a filthy foreigner and spat at on the street. I work over the internet - and obviously must be a paedophile. Internet = Paedophile - they see it on the TV so it must be true. Our doctor is so bad that at least half of his patients have been mis-diagnosed and ended up in hospital - at least three children have died because he mistreated simple illnesses. Our water doesn't come from a water tower, but from a tank supposedly reserved for the fire department - it's undrinkable without being boiled and makes people ill, but nothing can be done. The roads are so full of potholes we hardly dare drive anywhere, and yet the answer seems to be more motorways. People believe that rat's heads are full of poison, goose eggs are poisonous, hearing an owl means someone is about to die. People can walk into the local branch of the OTP bank and get our bank details, because they know the cashier (we've now closed that account). And every day, "Triannon, Triannon, Triannon...". Three companies that I worked with in Budapest have closed down their offices and moved out, as they see no future here.
We talk to other expats who've been here for years - Americans, Brits, Dutch, Germans and they all say the same thing. In fact, they are almost ashamed to admit that they have independently come to the same conclusion we have - that the people are remarkably stupid and untrustworthy. Even older generation Hungarians can't believe what has happened to the people, and the country they love.
I could go on and on, detailing all the monstrously stupid things we come across, but that wouldn't serve any useful purpose. I may even start a blog, if anyone would like to hear more of the bizarre and frightening tales we have to tell, and we have many. I doubt if anyone would find them credible though, after all this is a 21st century EU country isn't it? But of course we stay - we made our choice and will stick with it. We come from a different world and know what it's like to live in a civilised society that has an open media, a working democracy and rule of law. Yes, it's imperfect, as it is everywhere, but a least it's possible to see signs of progress. Yet in Hungary, things seem to be going backwards not forwards.

Hi aemann,

I still think you're not living in the best environment. If you're not exaggerating then you certainly didn't have any luck with you're pick. I'm aware of a lot of problems in the countryside, I have lots of relatives living in various small villages but you seem to have found the worst of all. No kidding, I would move if I were you.

But don't expect to find the Canaan in other regions either. As you pointed it out Hungary is much cheaper - not without any reason, it's a poor country compared to the UK. Why do you think you could afford to buy a land, set up your own farm, have the kind of lifestyle you wanted to? Because labour-power is way cheaper in Hungary. Yet I found that essential food, clothing, furniture, etc. is of just about the same price in the UK (if not cheaper) as over here. Why not go to IKEA if you want to compare prices. Now just imagine, you pay the fifth (or even less) of what you'd be paying at home but the expenses of your workers are nearly the same over here too. What's more most of them are perfectly aware of this, or at least they assume you've been earning 10 times more then what their wages will ever be. No wonder they try to get the most out of you. Not that it's ok though. And I can understand that you're furious - it happens to native Hungarians too, all the time, enough to have a bigger house than your plumber or carpenter and you'll be ripped of like any "tourist" if you're not on your guard. But not everybody is like that. Really.

If you have the impression that you're living at the wrong spot of the world - it's probably because you're living at the wrong spot of Hungary. Or else Hungary isn't the right place for you after all. I wouldn't go anywhere else mind you. Have tried quite a few countries but I'm just not cut out for them, find it much easier putting up with whatever goes on here than all the inconveniences that I would be facing anywhere else.

Anyway, I think it's your choice to stay or to leave and if you decide to stay then it doesn't do you much credit either to claim you chose the dark heart of Europe. But this is only my opinion.

alice