OCR
GEORGE P. FLETCHER and not to be recommended for anyone on a diet. Ihis explains why when I am teaching at Columbia, I always gain weight. Back to my adventures in Budapest. My experience in the Soviet Union in the 1980’s taught me how to deal with the Communist governments. I contacted some people at the Eötvös Loránd Faculty of Law and they were willing to employ me because I had published articles in the former Soviet Union. I knew that they had no money to pay me but they would probably have very nice apartments at their disposal. I negotiated a deal that reguired me to teach in return of an apartment. They gave me a fantastic apartment overlooking the Danube, the romantic centre of the entire country. It was on the flat Pest side facing the famous Gellért hotel in Buda, the hilly side. Down the street to the left was the famous market consisting of independent stalls selling Hungarian delicacies like goose liver. (Note in this memoir the associations with the delicacies of Hungarian cuisine). Hungary in the early 1990s was a place of great hope for the emergence of democracy in Eastern Europe. Though a small landlocked country, Magyarorszag is situated right as the cross-roads between Germany and the East. During the Holocaust, the Jewish community suffered less in Hungary than in, say, Poland. As a result, the Jewish community in Budapest has maintained some important institutions, such as Hannah’s kosher restaurant, a place where I have frequently gone for Friday night dinner. The liberal synagogue is one of the largest in the world (along with Florence). In the neighbourhood around the synagogue there is a rejuvenated and stylish ghetto with many cafes. My duties at the law school were to teach two classes, one on advanced criminal law in Hungarian and another, in English, for foreign students. The first was teethbreakingly difficult and the second very interesting because the students were basically Israelis, both Jews and Arabs, who because they were not admitted to one of the four universities, had to study abroad. This was before the founding of the miklalot, or colleges, which provide opportunities for Israelis not admitted to the top universities. Budapest was closer and cheaper than London. The teaching was less important for me than the opportunity to observe, close-hand, three major legal stories than unfolded while I was there. As I recall, at that time, I relied heavily on Karoly’s book on criminal justice in order to get my bearings in the local legal system.” This was not difficult, however, because all of Eastern Europe — indeed most of the world outside of the English-speaking and Frenchspeaking areas — relies on the German theoretical structure, which I had learned in Freiburg in the 1960's. 2 Bárd, Károly, A büntető hatalom megosztásának buktatói: Értekezés a bírósági tárgyalás jövőjéről, Budapest, Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadó, 1987. + 140 +