November 12, 2011

The Domino Effect
Budapest, Hungary
2011

I don’t think I’ve ever taken a photograph of a McDonald’s restaurant before. But this rather ordinary looking one is very special–it was the very first McDonald’s ever opened behind the iron curtain. I wonder if the government leaders that let it in knew it would become the capitalist straw that broke the back of the communist economic camel. O.K. maybe I’m giving McDonald’s a little too much credit here, but today there are McDonald’s everywhere in Budapest and it’s still the only place we’ve found with free refills on soft drinks, not to mention all the ice you want to cool it down. How can you compete with that kind of free-market economics?