Yet, curiously for those who have never experienced it, the presence nearby of war and destruction seems to add for Budapest a positive zest for living. Theaters and concert halls are full.
Churches are full.
Admitted to NATO only some two weeks before the Atlantic alliance began its massive bombing of Serbia in retaliation for Slobodan Milosevic s vicious treatment of Kosovo, Hungary is in a mood of veritable rejoicing. After hundreds of years of brutalization by tyrannies of one sort or another from both East and West from the Huns and Turks to the repressive regimes installed by both Hitler and Stalin Hungary is at last a bona fide and fully recognized member of the democratic West. At its current rate of economic expansion, moreover, Hungary in perhaps three years will become a member of the European Union, a development which scarcely over a decade ago would have seemed unthinkable for this former Warsaw Pact member. On the twelfth day of bombing Gen. Odom was joined in his demand for a NATO ground attack on Serbia from Hungary by columnist George Will and by James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence. An invasion force in the hundreds of thousands, followed by all kinds of armor and military supplies, would certainly transform the idyllic Hungary I have been traveling through, and every single one of the scores of Hungarians I met during my journey expressed horror at the prospect.