Travel Info: Hungary Travel

» The Kingdom of Hungary  was established in 1000 by King St. Stephen I. Initially the history of Hungary was developed in a triangle with that of Poland  and Bohemia , with the many liaisons with Popes and Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. Hungary 's landscape consists mostly of the flat to rolling plains of the Carpathian Basin , with hills and lower mountains to the north along the Slovakian border (highest point: the Kekes at 1,014 m). Hungary is divided in two by its main waterway, the Danube ( Duna ); other large rivers include the Tisza and Drava, while the western half contains Lake Balaton , a major body of water. The largest thermal lake in the world, Lake Hevíz  (Hevíz Spa), is located in Hungary. The second largest lake in the Carpathian Basin (and probably the largest artificial lake in Europe) is Lake Theiss.

Capital: Budapest
Offical Language: Hungarian
Area: 93,030 SQ KM
Population: 10,085,000
Currency: Forint
Calling Code: +36

» For some 95% of the population, mostly Hungarians, the mother tongue is Hungarian, a Finno Ugric language unrelated to any neighbouring language. Several ethnic minorities exist: Roma (2%), Germans (1.2%), Romanians (0.8%), Slovaks (0.4%), Croats (0.2%), Serbs (0.2%) and Ukrainians (0.1%).

» The largest religion in Hungary is Catholicism – Roman and Greek – (approx two thirds of the population), with a Calvinist minority (around 20%) and Lutherans (5%). However, these are book values, as the Hungarian population is not particularly religious; at most 25% practise their faith. Most of the country's Jews (1%) live in Budapest .

» Hungary has been the meeting place and battleground of many peoples, and its heterogeneous population was often the cause of social upheaval before 1919. However, as a result of the separation of non-Hungarian territories after World War I, the great slaughter of the Jews in World War II .

» Music of Hungary: Hungarian classical music has long been an "experiment, made from Hungarian antedecents and on Hungarian soil, to create a conscious musical culture [using the] musical world of the folk song". Although the Hungarian upper class has long had cultural and political connections with the rest of Europe , leading to an influx of European musical ideas, the rural peasants maintained their own traditions, so that by the end of the 19th century Hungarian composers could draw on rural peasant music to (re)create a Hungarian classical style.