Hungary

Food and water is generally safe, even in remote villages.

Private health care providers are high quality, but limited in scope once outside Budapest. Dentistry is cheaper here than in Western Europe 8-10000 HUF for an appointment and x-ray, and physiotherapy also 3000HUF for a half hour treatment, but check the price with the provider before you confirm the appointment. Outside Budapest you will likely have to speak basic Hungarian to communicate your needs as few doctors will have any English or German skills.

Public health care is free for qualifying insured people, and is of adequate quality in urban areas.

The country has joined the EU, so basic coverage is present for EU citizens, but check before entering the country how far are you insured and what you have to pay for. Do not expect at this time that the local doctor will know the EU rules, prepare to provide info.

The European Health Insurance Card is required from EU citizens applying for free treatment under this regulation; European health card for 1 June 2004 (http://europa.eu.int/comm...)

Pharmacies are everywhere, you may expect high prices, but very good pharmaceutical coverage. The only problem might be communicating with the pharmacist as most of them speak only Hungarian outside Budapest. Even some rusty Latin might come handy quite unexpectedly. For travelers from Eastern Europe, note that due to limited or abandoned trade of Hungary with Romania as of Dec 2006, some of familiar medications are unavailable--so be prepared to find a substitute in advance.

hungarian

See also: Hungarian phrasebook

Hungarians are rightly proud of their unique, complex, sophisticated, richly expressive language, Hungarian Magyar pronounced "mahdyar". It is a Uralic language most closely related to Mansi and Khanty of western Siberia. It is further sub-classified into the Finno-Ugric languages which include Finnish and Estonian; it is not at all related to any of its neighbours: the Slavic, Germanic, and Romance languages belonging to the Indo-European language family. Although related to Finnish and Estonian, they are not mutually intelligible. Aside from Finnish, it is considered one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn with the vocabulary, complicated grammar, and pronunciation being radically different. So it is not surprising that an English speaker visiting Hungary understands nothing from written or spoken Hungarian. Hungary did adopt the Latin alphabet after becoming a Christian kingdom in the year 1000.

English-speakers tend to find most everything about the written language tough going, including a number of unusual sounds like gy often pronounced like the d in "during" and ű (vaguely like a long English e as in me with rounded lips, as well as agglutinative grammar that leads to fearsome-looking words like eltéveszthetetlen unmistakable and viszontlátásra goodbye. Also, the letters can very well be pronounced differently than in English: the "s" always has a "sh" sound, the "sz" has the "s" sound, and the "c" is pronounced like the English "ts", to name a few. On the upside, it is written with the familiar Roman alphabet if adorned with lots of accents, and--unlike English--it has almost total phonemic orthography. This means that if you learn how to pronounce the 44 letters of the alphabet and the digraphs, you will be able to pronounce almost every Hungarian word properly. Just one difference in pronunciation, vowel length, or stress can lead to misinterpretation or total misunderstanding. The stress always falls on the first syllable of any word, so all the goodies on top of the vowels are pronunciation cues, and not indicators of stress, as in Spanish. Diphthongs are almost-nonexistent in Hungarian except adopted foreign words. Just one of many profound grammatical differences from most European languages is that Hungarian does not have, nor need to have the verb "to have" in the sense of possession - the indicator of possession is attached to the possessed noun and not the possessor, e.g. Kutya = dog, Kutyám = my dog, Van egy kutyám = I have a dog, or literally "Is one dog-my". Hungarian has a very specific case system, both grammatical, locative, oblique, and the less productive; for example a noun used as the subject has no suffix, while when used as an direct object, the letter "t" is attached as a suffix, with a vowel if necessary. One simplifying aspect of Hungarian is that there is NO grammatical gender, even with the pronouns "he" or "she", which are both "ő", so one does not have to worry about the random Der, Die, Das sort of thing that occurs in German, "the" is simply "a". In Hungarian, family name precedes given name, the same as with Asian languages. And the list of differences goes on and on, such as the definite and indefinite conjugational system, vowel harmony, etc. Attempting anything beyond the very basics will gain you a great deal of respect since so few non-native Hungarians ever attempt to learn any of this small, seemingly difficult, but fascinating language.

uncommon customs

Even if you meet someone of the opposite sex for the first time, it's not unusual to kiss each other on the cheeks instead of shaking hands as a greeting.

It's an old tradition although nowadays not held by everyone that Hungarians do not clink beer glasses or beer bottles. This is due to the legend that Austrians celebrated the execution of the 13 Hungarian Martyrs in 1849 by clinking their beer glasses, so Hungarians vowed not to clink with beer for 150 years. Obviously this time period has expired, but old habits die hard. This is not so much followed by the youngest generation.

foreign languages

Since English is now compulsory in schools, if you address people in their teens, twenties or lower thirties, you stand a good chance that they will speak English well enough to help you out.

However, due to Hungary's history, the older generation had less access to foreign language tuition, so your chances are worse, and with people over 60, extremely low. A minority of Hungarians speak Russian, which was compulsory in the Communist era, although most Hungarians are quite happy to forget it so try it only as a last resort. German is also very useful in Hungary: it is almost as widely spoken as English, and almost universally so near the Austrian border and especially Sopron, which is officially bilingual and has huge contacts with Vienna due to it being accesible by Vienna suburban trains. In these areas, and with older people in general, German will most often take you a lot further than English.

Basically, in Hungary, you will have a much better chance finding someone speaking a foreign language mostly English and German in larger cities, especially in those with universities such as Budapest, Debrecen, Miskolc, and Szeged. In rural areas the chance may be very low, in some cases even with young people.

respect

The 1956 Revolution continues to be a sensitive subject with the right wing community and many of the elderly. You shouldn't discuss the Treaty of Trianon 1920 with nationalists - they can take it pretty sensitively.

Open display of the Communist red star and hammer and sickle symbol, the Nazi swastika and SS symbols, and the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross, is prohibited by law. Make sure your clothing does not have these symbols on it, even if it's just a joke. You can be fined for it. One possible exception is displaying shirts and symbols with Josip Tito's, Yugoslavia's best-known leader, known in Hungary for straying from Stalin's path.

Members of the Gypsy community may find the traditional Hungarian label 'Cigány' pron. 'tzigan' slightly offensive, preferring to be labeled as Roma.

As a rural tradition, Hungarians affectionately refer to themselves as "dancing with tears in our eyes" "sírva vígad a magyar", as in a bittersweet resignation to the perceived bad luck in their long history. Avoid mocking Hungarian history and Hungarian patriotism.

When entering a home, shoes should generally be taken off.