The McGann Monologues

Happy Friday!!! It's been a long week here at Chez McGann. I can speak for all of us when I say, YAY, FRIDAY!

Was deciding what to write about today when it dawned on me...Hungary. I had a Hungarian friend here this morning for coffee, and we have a Hungarian couple arriving tonight from Budapest for the weekend, so it only seems appropriate. Most of my American friends know that we lived in Hungary for 11 years (1997-2008), but that's about all they know. They would have a hard time finding it on a map, and always ask me right away, "what language do they speak?" or "what kind of food do they eat?" or "did you really like living there?"

Tangent here for a minute, while I stand on my soap box. My biggest complaint about the American education system is that we don't teach our kids enough about the world they live in. Thankfully, my kids are lucky enough to have lived abroad and traveled. They would never have received that kind of education here. I can remember my middle/high school courses...a year of Ohio History in 7th grade, American History in 8th grade, World History in 10th grade, American History in 11th grade, and American Government in 12th grade. That means that one out of five years (20%) of my education in history/govenrment was spent learning about anything outside of the US. Even now, twenty five years later, my kids might learn something about Mexico or South America, but other than elective classes (Riley is taking a class this year called AP Human Geography), they wouldn't learn a thing about the rest of the world. When I have that conversation with Americans, often their response is "Well, America IS a really big country". Yes, it is. That being said, the world is a pretty damn big place too.

So, your lesson today shall include, but not be limited to, ten things you didn't know about Hungary*

Like neighboring countries, Hungary was part of the Celtic world, then the Roman Empire. following the fall of Rome, the Huns settled in the plains of Pannonia and gave their name to Hungary.

Hungary is one of the oldest countries in Europe. It was founded in 896, before France and Germany became separate entities, and before the unification of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

Hungarian language is known as Magyar. It is the direct descendent of the language spoken by the Huns, and is therefore not an Indo-European language. It has only two related languages in Europe : Finnish (Suomi) and Estonian (Eesti keel).

One third of the 15 million Hungarian speakers live outside Hungary, mostly in Romania, but also in all adjacent countries to Hungary.

Despite the country's name and its language, DNA tests have revealed that central Asian genes represent only a tiny percentage of the Hungarian population.

Around 1000 CE, the Kingdom of Hungary was one of the largest states in Europe, bigger than France. Later, it became of the the two "eagle heads" of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Hungary was one of the first communist-era country to oppose the Soviet regime during the Cold War, notably with the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The 1986 Hungarian Grand Prix was the first Formula One race to take place behind the Iron Curtain. In 1989, Hungary was the first communist-block country to open its borders with Western Europe.

In 1946, Hungary issued banknotes of a face value of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 pengo (one quintillion pengo) - the world's highest denomination ever.

According to EU statistics, Hungary the highest death rate by cancer in Europe, and the highest female suicide rate.

Hungarian inventions include the noiseless match (János Irinyi), Rubik's cube (Erno Rubik), and the krypton electric bulb (Imre Bródy). Several other inventions were made by Hungarians who fled the country prior to World War II, including holography (Dennis Gabor), the ballpoint pen (László Bíró), the theory of the hydrogen bomb (Edward Teller), and the BASIC programming language (John Kemeny, with Thomas E. Kurtz).

*source: www.eupedia.com

How's that for informative? :) I actually learned a couple of things too.

It's a place that I love dearly, and in all honesty feels more like home to me than where I live now. They were great years, living there. We traveled, made lots of friends, and in truth we became adults there (I was 25 when I went, but a far cry from an adult in the true sense of the word). We drank like fish and celebrated anything there was to celebrate. Our kids were born there and spent their formative years there. It remains, and always will, a part of me. With a bit of luck and my husband's ingenuity, we will return in the not so distant future for round two.

Thought I would add some pictures of Budapest, although if we are friends on FB, you probably have had more than your share show up on your wall over the years...

The utterly amazing parliament building