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The changes after 1989 saw many co-operatives disband and villagers gain more land to work as private holdings, but today unemployment is high in hill regions such as the Bükk, Zemplén and Mecsek. The pull of vibrant and cosmopolitan Budapest has exacerbated the problem of rural depopulation started during the Communist period. Impossibly neat peasant houses, manicured lawns and no barking dogs is usually a sign, however charming at first glance, that you are passing through a village where most inhabitants have died out and the cottages are now holiday homes.

In Budapest streets and squares have been renamed and statues removed in an attempt to erase the memory of the Communist era, but many village communities have neither the resources nor the inclination to indulge in symbolic acts. As a result many of the old street names continue to exist: Béke utca (Peace Street); Felszabadulás utca (Liberation Street); Vörös Hadsereg utca (Red Army Street); not to mention Lenin utca.

A History of Hungary’s Walking Movements