After a relaxing night's rest, we visited ING's main office in Hungary. It was conveniently located just down the street from our hotel and close to the bath house. ING is a giant global insurance and financial services firm with home offices in the Netherlands. They are best known known for their "orange" savings account in the states. We met with ING Hungary's chief macro-economist. He discussed with us extensively the Hungarian economy. The biggest challenges Hungary faces is the black market- which is the practice of employers paying workers under the table, tax evasion essentially. He said that only 25% of employers are paying into the Hungarian tax system. This a startling statistic considering Hungary has socialized medicine and a public retirement fund. In addition, he discussed Hungary's integration into the European Union.
After the ING business visit, half of our group went to meet with officials at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, http://www.bme.hu/en/. The purpose of this visit was to create an study abroad/student exchange program with Westminster College. Westminster has successfully established exchange programs with other universities in China and is hoping to spread the program to other higher education institutions of the world. I went with the other half of students to the US Embassy, http://hungary.usembassy.gov/. We were briefed by the Deputy Chief of Mission, Jeffrey D. Levine, http://hungary.usembassy.gov/dcm_levine.html. I got to say, I love the United States of America. We were given fantastic information on the region's political and economic conditions. The biggest barrier to Hungary's economy, according to Mr. Levine, was the political indecisiveness of the two dominant political parties regarding taxation. Budapest is critical to Eastern Europe's economy (post communism, 1990) because of it's location to larger and more developed countries in the EU.
After the visit the US Embassy, we went to the Great Market Hall, http://www.budapest-tourist-guide.com/great-market-hall.html. It is a huge indoor food and souvenir market. I got all of my Budapest souvenirs there. I got yelled at by one of the butchers for trying to take a second salami sample from one of the meet stands. He said in broken English "no, no, no . . . this is not restaurant"- I forgot that I wasn't at Sam's Club. Later in the evening, we made a second trip to the bath house and TGI Friday's. This time there were more students from my group there- we had a blast.
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