A power failure Saturday evening at Budapest Ferihegy Airport’s Terminal 2A resulted in scores of delayed flights, as authorities attempted to evacuate passengers from the building and transfer all flights and bags to Terminal 2B, located right next door. The electricity went out at 8pm local time and power will likely only be restored Sunday morning. According to Budapest Airport Zrt. spokesperson Mihály Hardy, problems with two 110 kilowatt cables caused the power outage. As such, all baggage reclaim machines are out of order, as are all automatic doors in the terminal. Terminal 2B, however, is not experiencing any of […]

Christopher Adam According to a press release circulated minutes before midnight (Central European Time) on 31 August 2009, SkyEurope has formally declared itself bankrupt and has canceled all of its flights. Bratislava’s Letisko M.R. Stefánik’s airport’s website now lists all of the Slovak discount carriers flights as canceled and SkyEurope’s own website carries a message informing passengers that the company has suspended all operations. Further, the vast majority of passengers will not be eligible for a refund, if they have already purchased a ticket for a SkyEurope flight. What can you do if you bought a ticket with SkyEurope for […]

Christopher Adam SkyEurope has stranded more than 1,200 passengers at Bratislava’s Letisko-M.R. Stefánik Airport earlier today, when it decided to cancel all of its afternoon and evening flights without any warning. As we reported earlier today, as well as last week, SkyEurope teeters on collapse, as airports in Vienna and Prague have decided to ban the carrier due to outstanding debts. Bratislava Airport’s spokesperson, Zuzana Hornanova, told journalists that SkyEurope canceled all of its flights due to „operational reasons.” Hornanova described the situation as „complicated.” The airline has yet to issue a statement, even though SkyEurope is now effectively grounded. […]

Christopher Adam SkyEurope’s financial situation went from bad to worse today, after Prague Airport decided that it would no longer serve the Slovak low-cost carrier’s flights until it paid its outstanding debt. Prague’s move follows the Vienna Airport’s decision to cancel all SkyEurope flights due to unpaid bills, which forced the carrier to transport ticket-holders to Bratislava Airport, located 59km from the Austrian capital. But the question now becomes whether or not SkyEurope will be able to survive the suspension of both its Prague and Vienna bases, and the likely collapse in passenger bookings. The first signs seem to cast […]

Christopher Adam Simmering tensions threatened to boil over between Hungary and Slovakia, as Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico decided to ban Hungarian President László Sólyom from visiting Slovakia, in order to unveil a statue of Saint Stephen, Hungary’s founding king, in the southern Slovak town of Komarno (Komárom). According to the most recent census, more than 60 percent of Komárom’s 37,000 residents are ethnic Hungarians and the town is located along the Danube, on the border between Hungary and Slovakia. Mayor Tibor Bastrnák had decided to erect the bronze statue in Komárom’s Lúdpiac Square, which depicts St. Stephen mounted on […]

Christopher Adam Hungarian low-cost carrier Wizz Air has now clearly overtaken its main regional rival, Slovakia’s SkyEurope. Once Eastern Europe’s largest discount airline, SkyEurope has failed to turn a profit since its founding in 2002 and was forced to file for creditor protection in June 2009. Since then, the Slovak carrier’s woes have only gotten worse. The carrier failed to reach a deal with Vienna’s Schwechat Airport last Friday, which led to the cancellation of all flights from SkyEurope’s Central European hub. SkyEurope reportedly has a significant outstanding debt with airports in both Vienna and Prague and as such, Schwechat […]

Christopher Adam Hungarians usually refer to the doldrums of August as the „pickle season.” In a modest parallel to Canada’s cottage season, many Hungarians traditionally flee their city apartments to work tiny plots of land behind weekend houses, the majority of which were granted to them during the bygone days of socialism. But this year is different, in that Hungary finds itself at the cusp of seismic political change, which is likely to transform the country. This sense of imminent transition permeates society, as the left teeters on collapse and as the right looks set to win the most massive […]

  Party Lists    Percent     Seats   Fidesz – Alliance of Young Democrats 56.37% 14   Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) 17.37% 4   Jobbik – Movement for a Better Hungary 14.77% 3   Hungarian Democratic Forum 5.30% 1   Alliance of Young Democrats (SZDSZ) 2.16% 0 Hungary’s centre-left parties, the Socialists (MSZP) and the liberal Free Democrats (SZDSZ), suffered a massive defeat during the June 7th European Parliamentary elections, as two right-wing party lists together won more than two thirds of the vote. The governing Socialists only managed to win 4 out of 22 seats allocated to Hungary in the European Parliament, losing […]

The Canadian Hungarian Journal and the Canada Hungary Educational Foundation are organizing a lecture evening at the University of Ottawa, on May 25, 2009 at 7pm, which will include presentations by three Hungarian academics. Historian Mária Palasik of the Historical Archives of Hungarian State Security in Budapest will begin the evening by discussing the role that women and technology have played in Hungarian universities, while Róbert Takács of the Institute of Political History will give a lecture on censorship and self-censorship under János Kádár’s communist regime. Márton Pászti of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics will complement the evening with […]

April 20th being Holocaust Memorial Day world-wide, it struck me as particularly sad that on the preceding weekend a gentleman, István Dósa, leader of a radical nationalist organization in Hungary, spoke before 200 supporters in front of the German Embassy and in essence stated that „nothing of the  Holocaust was true”. For a nation that had a 900,000 strong Jewish Hungarian population before the devastating events of the Holocaust, for such an event to occur in 2009 is hard to believe. On Monday, the actual day of memorial, the Hungarian education and cultural minister, István Hiller  asked deputies in Parliament to pass a bill to make denying the […]

The 11th Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival will feature a Hungarian contingent consisting of two writers and a publisher, who will participate in events in French, English and Hungarian. Award-winning writer Krisztina Tóth is one of Hungary’s most highly acclaimed poets. Her poetry has been translated into many languages and published in English by Bloodaxe. Born in Budapest, János Lackfi is a writer and a professor at Pázmány Péter Catholic University and the editor of the journal Nagyvilág. Hungarian publisher Miklós Nagy will participate in the International Publishers’ Forum, which brings foreign and English-Canadian publishers to Montreal during the […]

Forty-one year old Gordon Bajnai became democratic Hungary’s seventh prime minister on Tuesday, when MPs of the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) and the Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) joined together to elect recently resigned Ferenc Gyurcsány’s replacement. Bajnai, who is not a member of the Socialist Party, now faces the unpleasant task of introducing massive austerity measures, totalling more than 500 billion forints. Bajnai promised that the cuts „will hurt” and that the „bitter pill will not be sugar-coated.” Bajnai also promised that his prime ministership would last no longer than one year, at which point there will be national […]

Gordon Bajnai, the Socialist government’s development minister, was nominated to replace outgoing Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány in the early hours of the morning, following desperate, marathon meetings within the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) and the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ). Assuming that Bajnai’s supporters are able to muster a thin majority in parliament next week, the 41 year old development minister will take over the Hungarian government on April 14, 2009. Yet Bajnai will face major political obstables as prime minister, above and beyond the severe economic crisis which brought Hungary to the brink of bankruptcy. Gordon Bajnai comes […]

The Hungarian Committee of Montréal and the Embassy of the Republic of Hungary in Ottawa have partnered to organize a historical exhibit at the Place des Arts, with the aim of showcasing some of the most famous embroderies from Hungary, as well as the history of Québec’s Hungarian community. Needlepoint Halas lace is celebrating its 100th anniversary, while the first Hungarians also settled in Montréal a century ago. Hungarian Ambassador Pál Vastagh will open the vernissage, scheduled for 5 April 2009 at 5:00pm with an introductory speech and he will be followed by Andor Csukly, president of the Hungarian Committee of […]

Pacific Cinémathèque is preparing to present a four-film retrospective on Miklós Jancsó, among the great directors of 1960s European cinema. One of the masters of widescreen composition and elaborately choreographed long-take sequence shots, Jancsó’s fervid, transfixing, highly stylized and intensely formalist films are noted for their balletic, brutal study of repression, rebellion and revolution. Power and politics are destructive forces in Jancsó’s singular cinema, which is highly allegorical and can approach abstraction in its use of ritual, spectacle, massive scale and geometrical patterning to depict human events. His dramas explore, obsessively, turbulent events of Hungary’s past history; the historical settings […]