With Love from Europe: Hungary

Let me announce a new series here, on Scoutie Girl: With Love from Europe. The basic idea is to travel around the old continent, and to get to know this multicultural place a little better while I share my experiences I collected over the years in most of the European countries. So fasten your seat belt: our first trip is going to be to the place I know the best, which is my home, Hungary.

alphabet journal by artractions

This not so big – rather small – country in the middle of Europe is blessed with a very difficult language: some say that it is the 3rd most difficult language in the world. I guess we are right after Japanase and Chinese. We not only have a hard-to-learn language, but weird eating habits. We eat poppy seeds with pasta: it is a delicacy. We also eat – a sort of – cottage cheese with chocolate: a delicacy that practically everyone in the country loves. (OK, there maybe some people who might not like it, but they are weird.) It is called Turo Rudi, which would be Cottage Rudolph in English. On the top of it all: we have sweet soups (not delicacy) mostly made of sour cherry. Once I had the chance to cook sour cherry soup for Spanish and Brittish people: they were astonished by the sight of a pink colored soup. As you might have noticed by now: Hungarians love their tummies, and I think this is one of our main characteristics … or just mine? Whatever.

dog leash by davir

Budapest, Hungary by panoramas on Flickr

I could talk about how beautiful the country’s capital Budapest is, or how many famous Hungarians are there in the world, but you can google this, right? (For those, who are interesetd in the bare facts, here is the relevant
Wikipedia article about Hungary.) Instead, I want to give you a practical tool to the Hungarian soul: so here is a list about how to recognize if someone is Hungarian, even if he/she speaks fluently another language. (This list is written by Hungarians as far as I know.)

leather flower bag by farragobags

Typical house in Budapest by David Prando on Flickr

1. When the person uses sour cream more than ketchup.

2. When you ask if the person still believes that Santa Claus brings the presents on the night between December 24th-25th… then the person answers somehow confused that Santa Claus brings the presents on the 6th of December and it is actually Little Jesus who brings the presents on Christmas.

3. When the person leaves his/her house for longer than 2 hours, and he/she makes sure there’s enough sandwiches, apples, bottled tap water, coffee in a thermos, and chocolate bars packed for everyone to survive (without spending a dime)! (Remark: Absolutely true!)
4. When the person calls a 79 km long lake (the Balaton) the Hungarian Sea.
5. When the person does not speak with his/her mouth full.
6. When the person thinks (or thought in his/her childhood), that eating lots of carrot makes you whistle nicely.
7. If the person says “dustkittens” instead of dustbunnies.
8. When the tales do not end with “…they lived happily ever after”, but “they lived happily until they died”.
9. When the person wants to give his/her seat to every old person on the public transportation.
10. When the person’s language has two words for love.

art doll by
mankabymonika