Empty Hungarian village put up for rent

BUDAPEST - A Hungarian mayor is putting his entire village up for rent to put it on the map and bring in some cash, even offering the deputy mayorship as part of the bargain.

For 210,000 forints – around 2.3 million Ugandan shillings – a day, interested parties can rent out all facilities in the pretty but largely deserted village of Megyer, which has a population of 18 and is located 180 kilometres (110 miles) southwest of Budapest.

An advertisement posted online Monday says rental includes use of Megyer's four streets, two of them asphalted and two gravel, as well as the mayor's office, the cultural centre, the bus-stop, and seven furnished "peasant-style" houses.

"A law I brought in means an outsider can also become deputy mayor for a weekend, and even change the street names if you want," Megyer Mayor Kristof Pajer told AFP by telephone Tuesday.

Tenants can also use the village cooperative's six horses, two cows, three sheep, poultry house and four hectares of arable land.

A 42-year-old engineer from Budapest, Pajer said he fell in love with tiny Megyer when he first passed by it by chance ten years ago.

A year later, soon after buying a property there, he was elected mayor.

Pajer told AFP his goal was to save Megyer from the slow death suffered by many remote Hungarian villages whose young people leave for Budapest or abroad as soon as they can.

"Megyer was always poor, but it has kept its charming rustic atmosphere," says Pajer, who lives and works mostly in Budapest but visits the village once a week.

Only five of the village's twenty houses are lived in around the year.

"I hope the advertisement will bring Megyer some revenue, but more importantly some attention," Pajer said.

AFP


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