Rip Off in Budapest

PerhapsPerhaps, I shouldn’t jump the gun on this one but as I am writing this entry into a word document before cutting and pasting, I hardly have the opportunity to do any research on what I am writing, therefore, the assumptions and allegations in this entry are made up of impressions and at best flimsy circumstantial evidence, at worse.

Alright, let’s begin with why I am writing into a word document and why I have no internet connection in my room at the Stadion Hotel in Budapest’s number 7 District. The company that provides the internet for this and a number of other hotels charges almost four Euros for thirty minutes. Now I have just managed to open their website so you can look at the prices yourself; http://www.wiera.hu/index.php/service . Alright they seem to be a regular normal company. However, just check those prices; if you are staying at a five star hotel you will pay 30 Euros a day for your internet and if you are in a three or four star hotel you can expect to pay about 16.50 Euros. How the company Wiera gets the contract with the hotels and why the hotels don’t provide their own internet? These are the questions I would like to ask and as soon as I get the opportunity I will do a little research, although by the time I leave tomorrow, I probably won’t care anymore. The Stadion Hotel is comfortable enough but, like most hotels, in Budapest overpriced for what it is. Indeed, it is pre-1989 and …. Well, it would be interesting to look into who actually owns it.

Well, you have my reason for the rather unusual entry in today’s blog. Perhaps, I would do well to pay a little bit of attention to the book I am reading at the moment; Misha Glenny’s ‘McMafia’, which is an expose on organized crime, and on closer reading of the book, perhaps, I should refrain from asking too may questions like the ones above. No, I will just accept the fact that I am going to pay some 4 Euros for half an hour, cut and paste this entry, check my mails and go out to meet my friends for dinner.