Hungary Travel Guide

Hungary OVERVIEW

Suspected of being directly related to Martians (no kidding!), these people contributed to the world's overall achievement more than you would expect. It's enough to reel off an immeasurable list of their groundbreaking inventions or listen to Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies to agree there's indeed something extraterrestrial about the nation, not to mention the fact that it's the oldest country in Europe and one of the first to have dealt a blow to the socialist rule.

Hungary is a unique combination of eastern oriental taste and western sophistication. Remnants of the Roman Empire, floodlit bridges, Turkish baths, tiny medieval churches and magnificent basilicas, baroque city centers and splendid palaces is what you may expect. Pecs will make you dizzy with its culture galore, Visegrad brings up the history of Renaissance royalty, Debrecen stuns with majestic architecture, Lake Balaton will delight water sport enthusiasts, and Budapest simply escapes verbal description.

Kurt Vonnegut said: "If you have a Hungarian for a friend, you don't need an enemy", but we advise you not to take his word for it. Just go there and check for yourself. If you are not offered a shot of palinka within the first minutes of entering a Hungarian household, just face it- you're not welcome. Unfamiliar circumstances and new acquaintances are often looked at as potential threat here, which directly stems from typically high uncertainty avoidance. Historical downfalls made pessimism a principal state of a Hungarian mind and realism a treasured value. Yet don't think you've lost the game before you actually started to play. The majority of Hungarians perceive relationships as major sources of happiness, so if you make an effort to win their trust and always put the interest of a group before your own, you are very likely to be served a hearty dish of gulyash softened with a drop of thick, heavy sour cream... apart from palinka , of course. Jó étvágyat!