This summer I visited Budapest for the first time. What I was impressed by the most in that city is a visible ambition of the people in the street to become part of Europe once again. That ambition perhaps attracts, paradoxically, so many Austrian tourists I saw there. The difference is that the latter know perfectly well that the Europe in question can be returned to only during brief vacations. It has become an imaginary realm palpable only to those reduced to a compulsive and thus regressive dream. But the Hungarians have erected a dream of brick and mortar, a real dream. An unexpected achievement of real socialism, or socialism as it came to pass.