The building had bullet marks on the porticoed columns. Not being a ballistics expert, I could not place the age, but I stopped to look at the pockmarks of war, or maybe revolution. Same thing as far as the building was concerned.

My guide, a young woman , was dismissive. "Oh, we have lots of these," she said, impatiently waiting for her potential property buyer to move along and get on with the real business of the day.

Her dress was out of any TV commercial for any amount of products in any amount of countries. Her demeanour was frenetic, insecure, not sure of her place in the carousel of fashion. In her mother's time, as she told us, such styles were smuggled products of a decadent West.

Now, in full flight, this new estate agent drove a smart quatro car recklessly throughout the narrow streets of the old city, partied until dawn and regarded the past as - well, the past.

Indeed, I was seeing some of that past, as she made her living taking buyers like myself on a tour of properties for sale. Apartments in this capital of the one-time Hapsburgian empire were in large, grey Gothic buildings, built around a 19th century courtyard that resonated of imperial living. Shades of a time before the Russians marched in to liberate the country from the Nazis, only to outstay their welcome with communist repression.

All gone, swept away by the free market, though without the hysterical dumping of the past that made Moscow such a schizophrenic city during the early 1990s. Here, there were less neon signs on ancient buildings, more an orderly transition to the EU goodies, that lured her generation to work hard, live hard and, who knows, die hard, at the frantic wheel spins of her driving.

Clearly, she lived on commission because she tried to cram in as many properties in a day as would elsewhere take three days.

The group in the hotel - Irish landlords to a man and woman - reeled back exhausted, somewhat zonked by the amount of properties. And value, compared to our own dear, very dear, little republic.

If classical is your interest, how about 41.8 sq m (450 sq ft) for about €50,000 on the third floor of an apartment block? Find me similar for less than four times the price on any page of this supplement and you win the prize of a weekend in Budapest. Second prize, a weekend in Sofia, third prize, in Warsaw - and bring your own rashers.

As to the sellers, they were eager to sell, because those prices represent riches to them. For new build, off-plans, add a few more thousand and expect to double your value in about five years.

These comparisons encourage knowledgable visitors to buy. Beneficiaries of the Irish property boom, they recognised the embryonic signs in Eastern Europe. As one landlord told our guide, when she confessed she paid rent.

"My dear, buy now, because if your country goes the way ours did, you won't be able to afford it in a few years."

On the legendary back of an envelope, she showed how - if she bought one property - she could use it as security to buy a second.

Her eyes widened as if she had seen a dinky new hat - and she was supposed to be our property guide. Clearly, investment still has some way to go in Eastern Europe, where the former habitués of communism still grapple with the idea of profit.

Which is why, maybe, the Irish were buying like their grandfathers did at a Munster fair day, flush from a good harvest.

Except now they are reaping the expertise of the property boom in their native country and applying it overseas, in capital cities that seem ripe for the learning.

Whether or not it's "a good thing" depends on which side of the bed you got out of this morning. "Morality" is a word I struggle to understand, but I quite like the idea of making one person modestly rich while giving another a roof over their head.

I am, after all, a landlord.