Looking on the bright side

EWA ANDRZEJEWSKA Editor What is a pessimist? An optimist with some life experience – at least according to the author of these words, Polish poet Julian Tuwim. Does this mean that the Central European property scene should only consist of pessimists, considering the two crisis years for the industry that we have just been through? We are entering the New Year with quite a lot of accumulated life experience. However, while listening to the opinions of the key players of the industry who we have asked to summarise the last year and make a forecast for this one, it seems that there are more of the conventional kind of optimists among them – particularly when they assess the future of the Polish, Czech or Slovak markets. But will the Hungarians, the Romanians or the Bulgarians finally be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel this year? Let’s be optimists and believe that they will. These deliberations, the feature article of the issue and the report on the 16