Letters to the editor

MY New Year's resolutions this year include the annual stopping smoking pledge, a feeble attempt to get fit, and a promise to stop ribbing my girlfriend about her graying hair. A fourth resolution, and one which I shall have no trouble in keeping is never to fly Wizz Air again.


I'll never fly Wizz Air again


MY New Year's resolutions this year include the annual stopping smoking pledge, a feeble attempt to get fit, and a promise to stop ribbing my girlfriend about her graying hair. A fourth resolution, and one which I shall have no trouble in keeping is never to fly Wizz Air again.


On Thursday, December 23, we arrived at Ferihegy at 4am in good time to catch the 6am light to Liverpool.


Due to "bad weather" in England we were told the flight would actually be departing at 11am. It seems that when Britain sneezes the whole of Europe catches a cold as the aircraft was actually coming to Budapest from Poland.


Not relishing the prospect of a five hour wait in Ferihegy, we asked if we could take the 6am to Luton instead (strangely unaffected by the Anglo/Polish weather situation). This, whilst possible, would be "very inconvenient" for Wizz Air, and would cost us an extra Ft100,000. Not the best news to deliver to a hungover Yorkshireman at 4am, so the ticket clerk dug deep in to her customer service 101 training and added acidly "You only paid Ft6,000 for the tickets, what do you expect."


I didn't expect a phone call from Wizz Air themselves at 8am with an apology for the situation and a detailed explanation as to why I was at that moment asleep in the Ferihegy chapel and not aboard an A320. Unfortunately, the call came, but only to tell me that due to Wizz Air's incompetence and complete disregard for their customers, my return flight to Budapest the following Tuesday would be two hours late and be rerouted via Poland.


More disturbing is the quote on their own website "Low fare doesn't have to mean a compromise on the basics of air travel comfort or safety." After dropping off our passengers at Warsaw last night, before continuing to Budapest.


We were invited to look in the overhead lockers and report any hand luggagewhich we didn't recognize?


The extra ?25m funding may as well be ?250m for all the good it will do the airline. Already it has developed a culture of cynicism and dishonesty. I would invite any responsible employee of Wizz Air to respond with an explanation (note: not "excuse") as to why they are having such difficulty in sending their customers


out on time or even to their chosen country destination.


I am convinced my resolution will be so easy to keep, not least because this time next year, Wizz Air will have become Was Air. In a market which is indeed characterized by the "cutthroat competition" Varadi keeps whining about, such arrogance and incompetence will prove fatal.


Matt Foster


Zúzmara Koz


Budapest


Editor's note: Wizz Air were asked to comment but declined to do so.





Bathtime action


BRAVO! Your paper has at last discovered - thanks only to TV2 - that energetic sexual activity takes place in the Kiraly Baths on Fô utca. I don't know where you had been sheltering before that.


I discovered what was going on in the Király Fürdô when I visited it as a tourist in 1991. Like all tourists visiting a town for the first time I had to try and "do" everything in case I never came back.


Something seemed to be "going on" in almost every corner - but mainly in the darkest corners - of the baths. My main concern was to try and get some value for my money by finding a quiet corner in which to get the benefits of the baths without being too near the action!


Of course I was to go back to Budapest and settle here. Thus I was later to laugh when I read in your paper the occasional summer series you ran by Lucy Mallows and Eszter Balázs about Budapest's various thermal baths and their special architectural features. They wrote appreciatively about not only the Király but also the Rácz, currently closed for possible conversion into a hotel. The Rácz was known to be a place where there was if anything even more activity that at the Király. Even your defunct rival Budapest Week had an article about the rent boys who "serviced" a line of elderly gentlemen sitting in the pool and collected their money afterwards in the changing room? statements of course denied by the management.


But Miss Mallows and Miss Balázs soldiered on with their architectural articles and I may at some stage have shot off a letter to you or one of them suggesting that to warn those who might be offended by the goings on they should mention that many of those present at the baths were there to inspect each others' architecture rather than that of the buildings! I can't quite remember if I did this but a rather stodgy note began to appear in later articles on the lines of "This baths is a meeting place of the gay community and tourists should come in an open spirit?"


This letter is written in a spirit of amusement at your earlier discretion; I am not at all homophobic, as my friends know well. I have a mischievous suggestion for you, Sir - with Miss Mallows now far away in Brussels you could perhaps dare to send one of your dishier young male reporters out to write the next summer series of articles on the various baths.


They should make interesting reading!


Peter Haley Dunne


Bartók Béla út


Budapest





Gospel truth


I ENJOYED Dr Esther Vécsey's personal reminisces about traditional Yuletide celebrations in Hungary (A Budapest Christmas, December 23), but take issue with her when she refers to "the Christmas story as told by the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke."


The "traditional" nativity is a combination of the stories told by Matthew and Luke, which differ in details quite markedly.


The Annunciation is made to Joseph in one Gospel, to Mary in the other.


Matthew gives us the star, the wise men and birth in a house - in his version, the family live in Bethlehem - along with the megalomanic Herod. But the shepherds, the manger (necessary because the family travelled to Bethlehem) and the Augustan census come from Luke.


Mark, like John, doesn't mention the back story to the birth of Christ at all.


Daniel Jones


Debrecen




13.01.2005