"Hungarian film comedies are my absolute favorites" - My Budapest

PROFILE 

Name: Peter Jones
Occupation: businessman
Nationality: Australian
Family status: single
Speaks Hungarian: yes

Having started my professional career at the age of 16 in the telecenter of an Australian bank, I soon became the most successful telesales employee, being able to persuade a number of people daily to buy the bank’s new service packages. From the bonuses I saved up, I financed my university studies of tourism and could also afford to go on a world-trip.

After having visited South-America, New Zealand, Europe and Hong-Kong, I ended up in Israel where I met a very fetching Japanese girl. Following my seduction philosophy, I told her I was a few years older than I was, and the magic proved to work.

It should come as no surprise that the next destination of my tour around the world was Osaka, Japan, where I spent my first year working for a moving company. This being about the only job I could do without knowing any Japanese, I worked 16 hours a day and quickly picked up my first words in Japanese: “lift”, “up”, “down”, “left”, “right”.
Already fluent in Japanese, a few months later I was offered a great chance.

I was invited to bake Hungarian palacsintás (pancakes) and pörkölt at the Osaka Food Festival. After long gastronomical consultations with my Hungarian grandmother on the telephone, I eventually managed to produce a few tons of dishes that resembled pörkölt and palacsinta, the preparation of which I originally had very vague ideas. Luckily, Japanese being devoted fans of sweets and desserts, the festival proved to be a great success. I earned 5000 USD in two days, with which I could open a Hungarian pancake mini-restaurant in downtown Osaka.

Selling Unicum and Tokaj wine to Japanese, besides the Hungarian pancakes, the restaurant went really well and was highly popular among the Japanese. Students from all over the city would come to consume Hungarian delicacies and to practice their English with me. Unfortunately however, the shop’s guarantor went bankrupt after about a year and so the mini-restaurant had to be closed.

I moved to Hungary with a Japanese girl, who had studied Hungarian at university. We decided to move here because she got a job in Budapest. We lived together for three years and meanwhile I started a new business.

I compiled a map, “Budapest for Kids,” for foreign families, suggesting places where children can be taken in Budapest.  Having been involved in the map-business for 5 years, I received an increasing amount of letters from foreigners inquiring where one could rent apartments short-term, and this was what had given me the idea of my current business.

I started letting a room in my flat, then my whole apartment and slowly the business started to grow. I am now letting the apartments of a building with 30 flats in Akácfa utca - hence the name of the establishment, Locust Tree. We offer private, self-serviced apartments in a brand new building.
 
I assume that, due to the impact of the financial crisis, prices in the real-estate market will go down in general. I am of the opinion that now is a good time to invest in the real estate market in Hungary.

Expatriates’ lives in Budapest can be really comfortable, particularly because they receive high salaries according to Hungarian standards.

One can enjoy Budapest’s thriving cultural life on a day-to-day basis: I just love the fact that I can go to the opera, the operetta or a theater basically any time I want to. This is something I would really miss if I were to go back to Australia.

If one has good contacts and knows the right people, anything can be arranged here in a very short time. This is very beneficial in business life, and I consider it very positive –although I can see its negative aspects too. This again is a thing that can not be experienced in Australia or Japan.

I can not stand that people here tend to be thinking in a box. People refuse to take responsibility for their own actions and things simply have no consequences in this country. Even in the state sector, and particularly municipalities have a tendency to always point the finger at others instead of taking the responsibility themselves.

I just don’t get Hungarian politics. It seems to me that all parties are rather corrupt. Orbán is clearly not an expert of economics, as opposed to Gyurcsány, who, however, should have resigned the day the Balatonôszöd scandal broke out. I can not comprehend how a prime minister can remain in office after he admits that his government has lied night and day for years. One can not and should not expect morality on the side of the society in case the prime minister himself proudly admits to be amoral. I therefore understand why there are riots, which on the other hand ruin the country’s reputation and inevitably affect tourism negatively.

Public transportation in Budapest is probably the best in the world. Excluding the controllers that is, of course, who are willing to do anything even way beyond the call of duty to effectively repel tourists.

What Hungarians should learn from Australians or the Japanese is that they should be more tolerant. It seems to me that people in other countries are considerably more understanding and less stubborn than here. Australians are more laid-back and relaxed, whereas Japanese could teach us a lesson from diligence, I am not keen on the fact that the only thing employees do here at 4:49 on Friday afternoons is watch the clock tick.

I definitely could not live without the Rudas and the Széchenyi Baths. There are no thermal baths in Australia, and in fact there are only ten countries in the world where spas exist, and I am overjoyed that Hungary is one of them. The thermal spa of Hévíz, with its unique medical care, is also a place that is definitely worth visiting.

Hungarian film comedies are my absolute favorites. I love Koltai’s films, and the famous film-drama about Hungary in the sixties, Sose halunk meg (We will never die). My favourite place to watch movies is the Palace Cinema of Westend City Center, where I go at least three times a week.

Taking walks on the Duna Promenade in the evenings with the fascinating illumination of the Castle and the Chain-bridge is the best thing in the whole wide world.

27-year-old Peter Jones was born in Sydney, 26 years ago. He insisted however, that we say he is really 27, firmly believing that this little white-lie greatly increases his chances of dating women.