Honey, Where's Hungary Anyway?

For many Indonesians, Hungary is an unknown place somewhere under the sun. Some people I know think it’s in Africa because of the similarity of its sounds with these African countries : Nigeria, Somalia, Hongaria...

For some other, who know Hungary is in Eastern Europe, often make the mistake with thinking that Hungary is a poor shabby unstable country being a long oppressed Eastern-Block country. Well, it used to be, but nowadays Hungary is a fairly modern country.

The Country

Hungary is a small country of only 93,030 square km, 1% of the area of Europe, in comparison to the 2 million square km Indonesia! (Gosh... we really live in such a big country...) It is located in the heart of Europe surrounded by Austria, Croatia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Ukraine.

The capital of Hungary is Budapest. It comes from Buda and Pest, two areas of the city that is divided by the river Danube. I know what's in your mind when you hear „Buda”... Nope, it has nothing to do with Buddha or Buddhism, and I didn’t see any temple like Borobudur or other there. The city is really far from anything in Thailand. In fact, it‘s a lot more like Prague with lot of cathedrals and churches, museums, castles, operas and beautiful governmental buildings.


The Language

The language is far from similar to other European languages. Only Finnish is a bit close to it. I heard it’s the third most difficult language to learn after Chinese and Arabic. Damn! I married a guy from a wrong country... :p


The People
I read a lot of comments in the Internet, and my hubby did admit it himself that Hungarians are unfriendly, depressed, unsmiling people. A perfect picture for a communist country back then. Fortunately, I found my in-laws quite different from that picture. They are nice, friendly and warm-hearted. I’m not saying this because they are my in-laws. They really are.


So, do you know the inventors of vitamin C and ballpoint pen are Hungarian? The developer of Microsoft Word and Excel is Hungarian? The first one in the world to send an e-mail was Hungarian? And my husband is a Hungarian? Now you do. ^ ^
-September 2009-

The Hungarian people picture is taken from here