We’re back. They aren’t

The four-week summer vacation of The Budapest Times is over – though the weather made the summer part questionable – and we are back to bring you coverage of what’s making the headlines in Hungary. Here’s the problem though: despite September being around the corner not much is happening in the country. We expected the municipal election campaign to be in full swing by now but the only splash was made by Ferenc Falus, the Budapest mayoral candidate of the left, who recently compared himself to a horse, then went on to say that he doesn’t believe the horse to be a particularly smart animal. We kid you not, this is what he said. Never mind the campaign, the forex lawsuits have begun, but courts are throwing out or postponing most of the cases filed by banks to prove that their loan contracts were not drafted in bad faith. In the past we could always count on National Bank Governor György Matolcsy to create some waves, but even the Monetary Council decided to put an end to the two-year lowering cycle of the base rate. So it seems like we came back a week too soon. But instead of acting like no news being important news, we decided to bring you three interviews from three various fields: Father Kozma of the Maltese Charity Service chatted with us about what it was like to help German refugees during the opening of the border, SAP Hungary director Markus Hilken talked about a new industrial revolution and Hungary’s part in it, and the Indian Ambassador discusses the relations between Hungary and one of the biggest economies of the world. And we are not out of subjects: in our next edition look for our interview with Miklós Németh, who was prime minister of Hungary when the Berlin Wall fell.