Hungary

The Magyars, a people from the Eurasian steppe speaking a Uralic language, arrived in the Carpathian Basin around 895 and, under King Stephen I, adopted Christianity and founded a kingdom in the year 1000. Medieval Hungary was a substantial Central European power until the Ottomans crushed its army at Mohács in 1526 and occupied the centre of the country for a century and a half.

The Habsburgs drove the Ottomans out and absorbed Hungary into their empire. A revolution in 1848–49 was suppressed with Russian help, but in 1867 a compromise created Austria-Hungary, a dual monarchy in which Hungary governed a large multi-ethnic territory. Its collapse in 1918, and the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, stripped Hungary of two-thirds of its territory and left millions of ethnic Hungarians in neighbouring states — a loss still central to national feeling.

Hungary allied with Nazi Germany in the Second World War; most of its large Jewish population was murdered in 1944. A communist regime followed, and the 1956 uprising against it was crushed by Soviet tanks, though the later decades were comparatively liberal ("goulash communism"). Hungary helped open the Iron Curtain in 1989, joined NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2004, and since 2010 has been governed by Viktor Orbán, whose consolidation of media and courts and clashes with the EU over the rule of law have made it a European outlier.

Hungarians tend to describe themselves as proud, a little melancholic, and conscious of standing linguistically alone in Europe. The Trianon loss, the 1956 revolution, and a long list of scientists, mathematicians, composers, and Olympians are common reference points, along with a dry, self-deprecating humour.

Thermal bathing is a genuine part of life, not just a tourist attraction: Budapest sits on a field of hot springs and has grand bath complexes — Széchenyi, Gellért, Rudas — where locals soak, play chess, and socialise year-round. Folk music and dance were revived through the "táncház" (dance-house) movement, and Hungarian classical music (Liszt, Bartók, Kodály) has an outsized reputation.

The Catholic and Calvinist calendars, name-days, the wine harvest, and Christmas and Easter customs structure the year. Coffee-house culture, chess, and a strong literary tradition — much of it untranslated because of the language barrier — round out the picture.

About a fifth of Hungary's 9.6 million people live in Budapest, formed in 1873 from hilly Buda and flat Pest across the Danube. Debrecen, Szeged, Pécs, and Győr are the main regional cities; much of the country is farmland — the Great Plain (puszta) in the east, the Transdanubian hills and Lake Balaton in the west.

The economy is industrial and export-oriented, tightly linked to Germany, with car manufacturing (Audi, Mercedes, BMW, and a large Chinese battery investment), pharmaceuticals, and agriculture prominent. Wages have risen but remain below the Western European average, and emigration of young workers to Austria, Germany, and Britain has been significant.

Daily life is comfortable and home-centred: an early start, a hot lunch as the main meal for many, the market hall for produce, and weekends at a Balaton cottage, a spa, or a village pincesor (row of wine cellars).

Hungarian cooking is hearty and defined by paprika, introduced from the Americas via the Ottomans and now grown around Szeged and Kalocsa. Gulyás is properly a brothy soup of beef, potato, and paprika cooked over a fire, not the thick stew sold abroad as "goulash"; the thick version is closer to pörkölt. Chicken paprikás with nokedli dumplings and sour cream is the Sunday classic.

Other staples: halászlé, a fiery river-fish soup; töltött káposzta (stuffed cabbage); lecsó, a pepper-and-tomato stew; lángos, deep-fried dough with garlic, sour cream, and cheese; and hortobágyi palacsinta, savoury filled pancakes. Sweet dishes such as somlói galuska and Dobos torte, and the spiral kürtőskalács chimney cake, are taken seriously.

Hungary is a serious wine country: the sweet, botrytised Tokaji Aszú (a historic royal favourite), the robust reds of Eger ("Bull's Blood"), and crisp whites from around Balaton. Pálinka, a strong fruit brandy, and the bitter herbal Unicum are the spirits.

Budapest is one of Europe's great capitals: the riverfront Parliament, the Chain Bridge, Castle Hill with the Matthias Church and Fishermen's Bastion, the grand boulevards and Heroes' Square of Pest, the ruined-building "ruin bars" of the old Jewish Quarter, and the thermal baths, all threaded by the Danube. The banks of the Danube, the Castle Quarter, and Andrássy Avenue are a UNESCO listing.

North of the city, the Danube Bend turns sharply through wooded hills past the artists' town of Szentendre, the basilica at Esztergom, and the castle at Visegrád. West lies Lake Balaton, Central Europe's largest lake, with resort towns, the Tihany peninsula, and vineyards on its northern shore. Eger, to the northeast, has a castle, baroque streets, and the wine cellars of the Valley of the Beautiful Women; Tokaj, further on, is the home of the famous sweet wine.

Pécs, near the Croatian border, keeps a former mosque as its cathedral and early Christian tombs from Roman times; the Hortobágy on the Great Plain is a protected grassland of shepherds, grey cattle, and huge skies; and the caves of Aggtelek in the north are a World Heritage Site shared with Slovakia.