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BUDAPEST, Nov 5 (AFP) - Ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Hungary has one of the best standards of living in the entire ex-communist bloc. But not everyone is sharing in the new wealth.
While some have got rich quick, the country's transformation has also produced a new underclass -- including some who are still trying to get back property confiscated during communism.
"I could buy two flats apiece for both of my children for the price of a fence like this," sighs Margit Katai, 69, standing in front of a fence so high you cannot see the luxury villa behind.
The retired schoolteacher is making her weekly walk through a posh Budapest suburb to her lawyers to discuss her proceeds from a government compensation scheme for land confiscated from her father in 1953.
She has made the journey every week since 1991 through a district so expensive there is no public transport. The latest model Mercedes and Audis swish by as she talks.
Under the government scheme, Katai's family land was valued at a mere 25,000 forints (97.6 euros, 103 dollars). She was given vouchers to that value, to spend on what she wants.
But she wants land, and nothing else.
"I want to provide for my grandchildren. Land prices will rocket when Hungary joins the European Union," she says.
With her vouchers, Katai has bought back scattered plots -- among them patches two metres (yards) wide and 40 metres long -- which she hopes possibly to re-sell, to eventually buy something usable.
She still has more than a third of her vouchers. "I have almost gone crazy in this," she told AFP.
Over the past decade this former Soviet satellite state has joined NATO, started talks for EU membership, and launched an economic growth that is double the EU average.
But the fact is, building a successful market economy has polarized Hungary.
Self-made entrepreneurs, bankers, western-trained managers, lawyers and high-profile performers will be at the upper end of the scale, Viktoria Verner of HVG Exotic Travels said.
Since 1995, her travel agency has offered dream trips to faraway continents, two weeks for a price of up to 20 times the average net monthly salary of some 50,000 forints (196 euros, 205 dollars).
"Our most expensive offer now is a round-the-world trip, for 1.3 million forints (more than 5,000 euros). We have had some 10 applicants so far," she said.
In the downtown Budapest Porsche salon, at least one Porsche is being sold monthly, up from just one sold in 1991, manager Geza Aradi says.
"Bank presidents, doctors who own private clinics, or large-scale traders buy them -- most to fulfill a childhood dream," he said.
While the new elite cannot number more than tens of thousands, one in five Hungarians live below the official subsistence levels, recent studies have said.
Beggars who were nonexistent 10 years ago swarm around Budapest traffic junctions and more and more homeless people queue at shelters for a plate of warm food in the winter.
Many Hungarians continue to take second or third jobs to provide for their families.
"Real incomes have continuously dropped ever since the 1980s, so Hungarians will do anything to try to keep their heads above water. They would really do anything," Peter Pataki, the head of a labour counseling service, said.
"I have seen young teachers go to work as go-go girls in western European bars," he added.