Last week I talked to my roommate about her experiences of going to the other side of the world entirely to travel to Australia. For this week, I branched outside of my room and interview my friend, Liz from across the hall about a country that I not is well know, but just as interesting as any other. She told me about her experiences in Hungary, which is a country that is located in Eastern Europe.
Her mother was born in Szeged, Hungary which is just south of the capital city of Budapest. Although Liz has never been to the city of Budapest before, she did give me some interesting history on it. Budapest actually used to be two cities, Buda and Pest. They were a divided kingdom, but eventually they reunited and form a large Kingdom that stretched over present day Romania and other bordering countries.
Unfortunately after World War I, Hungary lost most of its land because of a treaty. It is now half the size it used to be and is situated between the countries of Romania, Slovakia, Austria, and Ukraine. With the lose of land, many of the native people of Hungary were displaced and are not presently living in Hungary today.
When she traveled to Hungary, she was visiting many family members who presently still live there. Interestingly enough, her grandmother was actually born in Transylvania ( and no she isn’t a vampire). She told me that she wishes that Hungary wasn’t overlooked as much as it is because it is such a beautiful country with many things to offer. It’s off the beaten path so most people don’t think to travel there, but she assures that if you were to travel there, you will not be disappointed. It’s landscape is flat and covered in plains, she compared the landscape to being similar to Midwestern USA.
When visiting there, she recommends that you make a trip to Lake Balaton located in western Hungary. The lake is a major tourist destination in Hungary and is definitely a must see. It is the largest lake in central Europe. On the lake, there is a town called Tihany, which is famous for its beautiful abbey.
While in Hungary, you will often see paprika being sold in many of the farmer’s markets. It is one of the staple spices in Hungary and they use it in many of their famous dishes. One of the these dishes is called Chicken Paprikash Nokedli. Nokedli are a type of dumpling and the sauce has paprika in it. It is made by making dough and cutting it into small pieces. She described it as being a mix between Polish pierogis and Italian gnocchi. Sounds delicious to me!
Goulash is a big dish as well. It is a stew of vegetables and meat and of course, can’t forget that staple ingredients of paprika!
For dessert, Hungarians pride themselves on Palacsinta, which is the Hungarian form of a crepe. Sounds to me like you will definitely be eating well there!
Although the food sounds good, you have to be careful of the water there. There is a lot of fracking taking place in Hungary that makes the water unsafe for drinking. Be prepared to recycle a lot of plastic water bottles!
If you are worried about the language barrier, I am here to tell you that it should not be a concern. Many Hungarians speak English because they are taught this language from Kindergarten and up.
In fact, because Hungarian is such a hard language to learn, many of the shows and movies in Hungary have English voice overs. They call these voice overs “dubbed” and there are no Hungarian subtitles provided. Instead of having famous actors, many Hungarian people are famous for being voice over parts in movies and television shows.
Something that I didn’t realize was that Hungary is actually 8th in the world for Olympic Gold Medals and swimming and water polo are huge sports there.
Some other fun facts about Hungary:
They have the King’s right Hand embalmed and it’s on display with other holy relics. The king is Saint Stephan of Hungary, he was the first Christian king in Hungary.
There are several types of dogs that come from Hungary called Vizsla, Puli, (Mark Zucherburg has one), Komondor, and Kuvasz,
The inventor of the rubix cube is Hungarian.
The T- model for Ford was designed by a Hungarian American Immigrant.
A Hungarian invented the hydrogen bomb.
I hope you enjoyed learning about Hungary and become more aware of the Hungarian impact on our world. I hope you will consider traveling there!
Alexia, I really like how informative and layered your blogs are. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved traveling, learning about culture, and food; you touched upon all three in this post.
I honestly never realized that paprika was such a prominent ingredient in Hungarian culture. I have some friends from Romania, and, based on their dietary preferences, I always assumed that Eastern European cooking did not highlight bold, aromatic spices. Clearly, I was wrong (That being said, I’m definitely looking forward to trying some Nokedli when I get the chance).
Admittedly, I haven’t had the opportunity to travel too much in my life, but, I have a list of destinations that I want to visit in the next few years. Hungary is now officially on that list.
Overall, great post. You reallly captured Hungarian culture, and have inspired me to explore it more.