Mall Brings Joy of Shopping to Hungary

Forget the Baroque promenades, the Danube River vistas and the Old World charm that make this regal capital one of the top business and tourist destinations in Eastern Europe: Istvan Bosze and his friends would rather be at the mall.

Not that Bosze knows a whole lot about shopping malls. He’s only seen three, and the first of those just opened here last fall.

But make no mistake about it. Malls are the coolest thing. Ever.

“Not a day goes by when I’m not here,” said Bosze, 20, staking out a favorite third-floor railing at the Duna Plaza mall, his Nike cap--brim to the rear--precisely arranged over his brow and a leather Replay Blue Jeans jacket dangling from his wiry frame.

“About five hours a shot,” he announced, scoping teenagers sipping Cokes below. “I like to see some of the same faces every time I come.”

The cockeyed, geometric-shaped Duna Plaza probably wouldn’t rouse the mall set in Southern California. But it has whipped up a shopping and lifestyle revolution in trend-setting Hungary not seen since the mom-and-pop retail boom that followed the demise of communism here in 1989.

The first American-style mall in the former East Bloc, the $60-million center draws 30,000 shoppers a day--nearly double that number on weekends--to a noisy warehouse district on the city’s dreary fringe.

Among 20 such malls proposed in the Hungarian capital, Duna Plaza and cross-town rivals Polus Center--it rose from the rubble of an abandoned Soviet military base--and Kispest Europark--Budapest Mayor Gabor Demszky was among the first shoppers last month--have introduced Hungarians to an icon of suburbia more commonly associated with Middle America than Mitteleuropa.

“What is happening here has happened throughout the world,” said Zeev Ben-Zvi Klein, the Israeli general manager of Duna Plaza, a joint Israeli-Hungarian venture with seven other malls in the works. “Everyone is running away from downtowns, looking for one comfortable place that has everything they need. The time has come for Budapest.”

After just six months of walking the neatly scrubbed marble floors, the city’s mall-goers seem to concur wholeheartedly. They are not only hooked on one-stop shopping but also crazy about the generic mall culture that comes with it--from 501s at the Levi’s Store to Happy Meals at the food court to Luke Skywalker at the multiplex to Sega Touring Cars at the video arcade. There is even a Western-style movement afoot to ban smoking--a national pastime in Hungary.

“This place is more interesting than anywhere we’ve shopped,” said Sandor Liebau, a portly businessman cruising the fast-food offerings with his schoolteacher wife, who had a newly purchased $320 leather jacket tucked under her arm. “We are spending the whole day here.”

Like any good shopping experience, Duna Plaza is more than a collection of its 120 stores and 1,300 parking spaces; it is nonstop entertainment. The three-story mini-city boasts 10 computerized bowling lanes, an indoor ice rink, a pool hall, a video game center, an Internet club, a toddler rumpus room, nine movie screens, a pair of glass elevators and a compact disc store with listening booths.

Dangling Sony television sets adorn the corridors, blasting videos of Val Kilmer as the Caped Crusader and Bruce Willis in “Die Hard.” Hungarian pop singer Tamas Somlo has raised the roof, while a lucky customer recently raced off in a free Volkswagen and another jetted to the Canary Islands. At Easter, the main floor was converted into a giant egg-decorating classroom; folk artists and puppeteers have played to shoppers from as far away as Russia.

“Whenever you come here, you feel like spending your money, but you always know you are going to have fun doing it,” said Laszlo Sanko, 26, a plumber who takes his teenage sister to the mall every weekend. “It is a totally different feeling than walking around in town. Everything is so civilized and nice.”

Hungary has always been a trendsetter in Eastern Europe when it comes to Western consumer ways. Even before the changes of 1989, its “goulash communism” provided an eclectic brew of command and market economics, with state-operated shops packed with luxury goods rarely available elsewhere behind the iron curtain.

In the 1990s, the country has attracted more foreign investment (about $16 billion) than any other in the former Soviet bloc--an achievement hard to ignore with 38 Dunkin’ Donuts, 38 McDonald’s, 15 Pizza Huts, 12 Burger Kings and four Kentucky Fried Chickens in Budapest alone.

Even outside Hungary, Eastern European shopping habits are changing, with megastores sprouting up on the outskirts of big cities everywhere and consumers from Poland to Bulgaria cashing in on the rewards of the transition by spending more than ever.

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A recent report by Euromonitor, consumer market analysts based in London, said retail sales in the region grew by 47% to $198 billion between 1991 and 1995, and forecast more growth for the next five years. Hungary accounted for 9% of the regional sales in 1995, even though its 10.3 million residents make up just 3% of the survey population.

But as Hungary is the most mature of the transforming Eastern European economies, its retailing has also become the most competitive and its shoppers the most discerning. Marketing analysts say it was inevitable that the country would be the first to develop an appetite for what has become the world’s ultimate shopping experience.

“The coming of Western-style malls and entertainment centers is a trend that you can see in other places [undergoing social and economic change] as well, like South Africa,” said Tracey Booker, a consumer products specialist at consultants Booz, Allen & Hamilton in London. “For that matter, they are still springing up across Europe, in France, Italy and the U.K.”

It is still early, but the thriving Hungarian mall business is likely to be followed by another Western retailing pattern: Putting the squeeze on traditional downtown shopping districts. The ever-jammed Vaci Utca promenade, with its many boutiques, cafes and department stores, has yet to feel the pinch. But some downtown Budapest retailers already worry about a looming Darwinist struggle.

“The best of the stores will survive, but I don’t see many family-owned shops making it,” said Klein of Duna Plaza, where 60% of the tenants are businesses owned by foreign chains.

But if Judit Bese, a 16-year-old Duna Plaza regular, and her crowd are a barometer, the future could also get stormy at the new malls. Cool, it seems, does not always ring at the cash register.

Bese says she has made nearly 100 friends at Duna Plaza, passing the time smoking cigarettes, playing practical jokes, checking out the latest jewelry and listening to CDs at the Virgin Megastore.

“It is like our second home,” said Bese, who spends more time at Duna Plaza than in school these days. “I am here sometimes from 10 in the morning to 7 at night, and it never gets boring.”

What is her favorite thing to buy? “I’ve never bought a thing,” she said.