Budapest, Hungary was the destination for some 15,000 Croats, Serbs, ethnic Hungarians and all those in between. The most fortunate of them study at Central European University on full scholarships, several established the best clubs and pizzerias in town and a few are living off the goodwill of friends and lovers.

Unfortunately, what all of them have to deal with is a negative stereotype of the Balkans. Never mind the white collar crime that goes on daily in Hungarian firms or the scandals persistent in the Hungarian parliament, leaders are quick to point out that most crime in Hungary can be attributed to foreigners. A couple of grizzly incidences, one which involved the murder of Z. Nagy in Szeged and a recent series of shop killings, were blamed on...you guessed it, residents of Yugoslavia.

One woman from Sarajevo who I became friends with was particularly sensitive about these less-than-flattering stereotypes. When a Croatian became the prime suspect in a purse theft at my apartment, "Mara" was quick to point out that the incident would give them all a bad name.

Unfortunately, Mara proved to be a scam artist of great proportions, doing nobody from the Balkans any favors. Early on, I was impressed by this woman's joie de verve and her efforts to start her own business in Budapest. She had left Sarajevo at the beginning of the war having only a couple of addresses in Budapest. She enrolled in art school and as the story goes, she got involved in drugs. When I met her this fall, she was living with a foreign man who was financially stabile and said those troubles were behind her. She seemed to know everybody in town and appeared to be very generous with her friends. She had no qualms about paying for dinner. She liked to bring over small gifts, and once, she spent over 500 deutsch marks on a party to launch the studio. She appeared to be busy custom making clothing for her clients. Besides this, she claimed that a relative in Vienna was investing both in her business and in an apartment she was hoping to buy soon. When she appeared one day asking to borrow money, explaining that her seamstress needed to pay back some money sharks, I didn't hesitate. Neither had about 10 other people who she had borrowed large amounts from.

When she continued postponing the payback, I started to worry. So did another friend who she had borrowed money from. Once Mara's boyfriend found out, he called me right away to tell me the bad news. Mara had been borrowing for years, she didn't have any money to her name and she had lied about her reasons for borrowing the money and of course, about the rich uncle.

As a result of the embarrassment the incident caused herself and the problems it particularly caused for her boyfriend, Mara quickly returned to Sarajevo after five years in Budapest without hardly informing anybody.

She was lucky that her money entanglements didn't result in any physical damage. She only has her boyfriend to thank for that, since he managed to pay back those who had managed to find out before she left.

I didn't conclude from this incident that all people from the Balkans are thieves and liars. While Mara had borrowed large sums of money, the interesting thing is that she never kept it for herself. We learned that she had bought a plane ticket for a friend to go to the U.S. and had also lent "Dragan", a former school teacher from Vukovar, money to invest in his burek business.

Before Mara left, she said Dragan would pay me back the money she owed me. Of course, nobody believed that he would. After all, he was a third person and had no direct responsibility toward me. I had met Dragan a couple of times and my impression of him was that he was a belligerent drunk.

But the next time I met him --on his 30th birthday party-- things seemed to have changed. His appearance was more professional and he claimed he had sworn off alcohol. What is most important is that he is taking his business seriously. After recruiting Tony, a young Macedonian from Skopje to make the burek, he introduced several kinds varieties at the Student's Island festival. In Yugoslavia, burek is soul food, but in Budapest, he has managed to elevate the food's status to something more neuveax. The Szechenyi Library, the National Museum and the Goethe Institute number among the 50 places burek is sold at about 1 DM 50 a piece. He even has plans to open up a downtown burek outlet, where he will also sell Turkish coffee and other Yugoslav specialties.