THERE IS a strong, fresh wind that blows in the Carpathian basin, right in the centre of eastern Europe and in howling distance of the traditional eerie draughts of Transylvania.
Dublin has its own remnant of this gust, blowing through a pretty Georgian building in Fitzwilliam Square which is now the embassy of Hungary. The ambassador, Mr Laszlo Mohai, is hoping enthusiasm for his country in this, its very special year, will sweep us all at the end of this month during a Hungarian cultural week which includes a performance by a Hungarian orchestra in the National Concert Hall on October 27th,
Last week the German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, in Dublin at the time of his country's sixth anniversary of unification, had markedly kind words for Hungary, the country which helped to bring down the Berlin Wall in 1989 by allowing a massive exodus of East Germans to cross its territory to Austria.
Hungary is this year marking the 40th anniversary of its doomed break for freedom from its Russian masters which ended in the repression of late 1956. But it is also the 1,100th anniversary (the millicentenary) of the founding of the Hungarian nation by the great Magyar coqueror, Arpad.
Historic anniversaries are, however, the least of the matters occupying Hungary's political and economic classes at the moment. The signing of a treaty with Romania last month in Timisoara marked the official ending of years of tension which originated with the Treaty of Trianon after the first World War.
Around three million ethnic Hungarians were placed outside the national boundaries, most of them in Romania. Resentments have simmered there ever since. The Timisoara signing followed the earlier completion of a similar treaty with Slovakia, where a considerably smaller number of ethnic Hungarians live.
The Hungarian ambassador to Ireland, Mr Mohai, says the treaty is a critical turning point. "There is a general impression that we have been pressured to sign this agreement by the EU and the big powers. But we are not doing it because of this, but because of our conviction that we need to reconcile with Slovakia and Romania. We would like to live in good relations with them both," he says.
The major problems between Budapest and Bucharest for most of this century involved education and language. Sometimes tempers flared but the situation was never likely, observers say, to turn into "another Bosnia".
Mr Mohai concedes that not all his countrymen supported the treaty. "There were fierce debates in parliament, and although we are used to saying that there are no extremist parties in our parliament, we did see extreme nationalists accusing the government of betraying our people." But many others viewed the signing as a triumph.
The newly-arrived Romanian ambassador to Dublin, Dr Elena Zamfirescu, was delighted that the treaty, over which negotiators from both sides had laboured for many months, came to fruition.
But while the signing of the treaties with neighbouring countries might have gone some way to healing wounds from conflict and politics early in this century, the scar from more recent happenings is more complex.
The 1956 uprising against Soviet rule was one of those gallant popular uprisings - like the Prague Spring in 1968, or the students massacred in Tiananmen Square in 1989 - which filled onlooking countries with compassion if also a sense of powerlessness. Thousands of Hungarians were killed and over two hundred thousand fled into exile.
For Hungarians, the after-effects of October 1956 were often strangely muted. Mr Mohai, of the generation who were children 40 years ago, says he grew up amid national silence about those events. "Until 1989 what happened in 1956 was officially termed a `counter-revolution', and to celebrate it was taboo."
The next big move for Hungary will be membership of the European Union. It is in the first tranche of the dozen countries queueing up to join the club.
"We are frequently compared with the position of Ireland when it was outside the Common Market," says Mr Mohai, an economist by training. "Then it was sort of a `footnote' country in discussions of the market."
He cannot guess when Hungarian accession to the EU will take place, and acknowledges that there are great problems in getting Hungary's house in order. But the non-EU alternative is not seriously considered, he says.