and had weird decorations posted all over the yard? Yeah, that's basically Hungary.

It's time to learn Geography...

...NOW!

Everybody say hi to my friend Nick! You may have recognized him as the charming scientist from America's Got Talent. Say hi, Nick.

What's up, team?

So I knew Nick before all that stuff and I collabed with him on his Youtube channel - Nickipedia a while back.

Check it out, subscribe to his channel if you want.

What we did was really good, it was like micro to macro.

It was a really sciency concept, I thought it turned out great.

So, the cool thing is Nick is actually part hungarian. He's super proud of it.

He's been to Hungary, so today he's going to co-host with me.

Question: is there anything that I should know before we start?

Yeah, basically just don't be more likable than me or have better abs and you'll be fine.

POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY

Hey, Nick...Yeah? Hungary is so eastern European, isn't it?

Yeah, they hate it when you say that and actually,

Hungary is a landlocked country located in Central Europe surrounded by 7 countries.

The nation is divided into 19 counties, whereas the capital Budapest acts as a separate administrative entity.

The largest cities are of course Budapest, Debrecen and Szeged.

However, the busiest airports are Budapest, Debrecen and Győr-Pér international.

Woah, you totally just took the animation narration.

Yes, yes I did.

I like this guy.

Now, you know me, I love border disputes, anomalies and territorial confusion

and although today Hungary actually doesn't really have any of those,

the interesting thing is that Hungarians like to claim that they are surrounded by themselves

due to the fact that there are high concentrated areas of Hungarians that live outside of Hungary and neighbouring nations.

This is because before World War I

Hungary was like a lot bigger and had a kingdom that spanned all the way from the Croatian coast

to a large chunk of what is now western Romania.

After World War I, the Treaty of Trianon cut up

over 70% of the land previously held by Hungary and seated it to its neighboring states,

which effectively cut off about a third of ethnic Hungarians still living in those areas.

Some of the largest concentrations are found in what is today the southern regions of Slovakia

and Szekely peoples in central Transylvania regions of Romania.

By the way Nick, fun side note, the comedian Louis "C.K" is actually part Hungarian,

but the C.K. part isn't his initials, but the pronunciation derived from Szekely.

Huhuh, I get it.

Otherwise the country is teeming with notable sights and landmarks such as St. Stephen's Basilica.

There's also Buda Castle

and the Visegrad Royal castle

Diósgyőr and Eger castle,

the Tomb of Gül Baba

Memento park,

the Cave Church,

the Citadela,

the Budapest Time Wheel,

the Bokod floating houses,

the Gorsium ancient ruins

and the country's most iconic building, the Hungarian Parliament.

Nick, you've been to Hungary. What do you recommend?

Definitely go to the geothermal baths.

Geothermal baths? Uuuh..

Super cool...

Speaking of geothermal activity...

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY

The more we progress to this episode the more you're going to kind of see how

incredibly distinct and set apart Hungary is from the rest of Europe.

For one, most of the entire country lies on the Pannonian Basin,

and sometimes called the Great Hungarian Plain,

nestled between the Carpathian Mountains and the Dinaric alps and the Balkan mountains on every side.

So basically Hungary is a bowl. Yes, I know Hungary, bowl - the pun possibilities are endless,

but we don't got time for that.

No pun this time. Gulyás in the bowl of Hungary.

Only about 2% of the country, mostly in the north,

is at 300 or more meters above sea level and the rest is mostly flat

in the largest grassland in Europe, the Hortobágy.

Otherwise, the two main and largest rivers the Danube and the Tisza are like the lifelines of Hungary as they travel north to south.

Just to skip away the largest lake in all of Central Europe - Lake Balaton,

sometimes referred to as the Hungarian sea. A strange thing about Hungary though

it would have to be the geothermal springs that can be found everywhere.

Budapest have more thermal springs than any other capital in the world.

Nick you're a scientist type of guy.

Tell them why there's hot springs in Hungary.

Sure. It's strange because there are no direct fault lines or rifts that pass through Hungary.

However, the area lies on a thermal basin not too far from the Eurasian plate that harbours geothermal activity

much like Yellowstone National Park in the US.

So what you're saying is you don't need to be on a fault line to have geothermal activity right?

Yes

But most distance spots from activity are not too far from a fault line. Nonetheless, is kind of like a "volcanic blister on Earth".

(I've learned something!) Otherwise the largest national park, Bükk, has eroded limestone karst formations

and nearby just to the west you can find the tallest mountain, Kekes, only about a 1000 m high.

Hungary has some the highest quality soil in all of Europe with over 51% arable land.

It allows them to grow a multitude of crops their favourite one being paprika or pepper.

PAPRIKA!

Although popular all over the Balkans, paprika is always affiliated with Hungary and Hungarian cuisine - they put it on

literally everything: chicken, fish, soup, sausage, even cake.

Speaking of which, some of the top Hungarian dishes might include:

Poppy seed rolls, stuffed cabbage and peppers, langos

Porkolt, Kürtoskalacs, sour cherry soup and the national dish everyone knows about - ‎Gulyás

commonly pronounced Goulash which I ate at every Christmas.

And keep in mind almost all these dishes we just mentioned have Paprika in them.

Speaking of which,

I was told you are not Hungarian unless you love Túró Rudi candy bars.

Mmm. Túró Rudi. You love those? Huge fan. Oh okay.

Huge! Confirmed.

So that's that Hungary's land make up.

Now we reach the most strangest and most interesting part: the people

DEMOGRAPHICS

Hey, Nick

Yeah

Hungarians are such interesting Slavs aren't they?

And that kids is the number one thing to avoid saying to Hungarian.

First of all, the country has about 10 million people and has the largest linguistically isolated people group in Europe.

Hey, men.

Good dude. Yeah, never better.

Now this is where things get a little tricky because like we said in the Czech Republic or Czechia episode,

the Hungarian census doesn't mandate racial identification upon registration

so what the report says might be a little different from what the actual numbers are but what it does say,

about 86% of the country's ethnically Hungarian,

somewhere around five percent are Romani or Gypsy and the rest are kind of unspecified.

It speculated though that the unspecified group is most likely made up of Slovaks, Romanians, German Serbes, Poles

and why not a few Greeks, Turks, Armenians and probably some more Gypsies.

Also, they use the Hungarian Forint, not the Euro despite being in the European Union,

They use the type C outlet and they drive on the right side of the road.

Now let's get some stuff straight: Who exactly are the Hungarians?

For one, Hungarians have roots that are technically not even originally from Europe.

According to legend, there were two brothers: Magor and Hunor. Hunor was the father of the Huns

Magor was a father of the Hungarians or the Maygar people. And they were maybe both sons of the tower babel guy from the Bible.

This is just what the story claims.

The Huns came in and took over the area in the 5th century

but were eventually expelled.

After the Roman empire and Germanic tribes stuff, yada yada yada

The Magyar tribes came in around the ninth century from what most historians speculate the central Asian steppe regions

far East past the Ural mountains in Russia.

It is believed they came in to reclaim the lost land of their cousins.

This guy unified the tribes and thus the first proto Hungarian state was born

from outsiders from Asia.

So Nick that means you might have some central Asian blood in you.

Nice

Does that mean I get a free pass and make some Asian jokes?

You get to make light Asian jokes at the expense of your Hungarian heritage.

What do you call a fifth century central Asian guy named Gary?

What?

Hun-gary!

After the proto Hungarian state was established history kind of went like this: Kings, Christianity, Mongols attacked twice, Turks, Habsburgs,

1848 Revolution, Empire with Austria, World War I Treaty of Trianon, World War II, join the Axis, bad idea.

Soviets come in and BAM! Eastern Bloc Communism,

1956 Revolution, Soviets retaliate, self-Communism

1980 end of Communism and finally the EU. Done.

The Hungarian language is strange. The only two relatives that exist

are the Khanty and Mansi languages found the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug

far east pass Ural mountains in Russia.

Now because this place was the birthplace of all Uralic languages, that means it's possible

that the Finns and Estonians might be far-off distant cousins of the Hungarians.

But it's so far often its remote that it's kind of like that one black guy that shows up at your family reunions

that you have no idea how you're related to.

I actually have two of those. What up Charlie and Andrei.

Eventually the people developed Hungarian Turanism

in the 19th and 20th centuries as a counter movement against the domineering

Pan-German and Pan-Slavic cultures

or just Europeans in general that surrounded them.

It all had to do with embracing their identity that tied them with Central Asia.

They take it pretty seriously. Some places even use the ancient Hungarian Rovás or runic script on city billboards.

In 2007, they even started the Kurultaj, an event that invades Central Asian Steppe nomadic peoples

in the first week of August with the intention to bind closer with their far-off distant cultural relatives.

People from Mongolia to Uzbekistan even South Korea show up every year and participate. Otherwise

Hungarian culture in itself today is saturated with unique customs and traditions. There are too many to mention but some universal ones include

Splashing women with water on Easter Monday

or how on St. Nicholas day kids put out their boots to get gifts

or how they throw lentils at each other on New Year's.

Don't forget the Buso mask Festival

or how bride will get kidnapped after her wedding and the groom has to perform a task to get her back.

The kidnappings, they're so beautiful.

Yeah, just wait till we get to the Kyrgyzstan episode.

One sport Hungarians love is water polo.

They have the best performance at the world water polo cup.

Even though they are landlocked, they are amazing in the water.

We are, we're like ducks.

Music has always played a huge role in Hungary since classic times to the modern Sziget festival,

one of the largest and most popular in all of Europe.

Otherwise some notable people of Hungarian descent might include people like:

Rubik Arno, Victor Orban, Piero Laszlo, Robert Capa, Harry Houdini, John von

Neumann, Maria Telkes, Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Bela Lugosi, although the Romanians might claim him too,

as well as numerous scientists, artists, musicians and athletes

scientists, right here.

Alright Nick, ready to close it down with one more segment. Let's do it: The Friend Zone!

FRIEND ZONE

Now Hungary might have an isolated culture, but definitely not an isolated social status

Definitely a popular kid. Yeah

First of all. They like to call Austria their brother-in-law

Because even though things got ugly a few times and yes the Habsburgs did try to kind of germanize them

so much history in cooperation has linked these two.

They even teamed up and opened their borders to East Germany to help the people escape to the west side during cold war times.

Now despite the Ottoman times, Turkey is actually kind of the wild-card friend that you wouldn't expect

not only because they have distant technical ancestral lines

But Turkey also left its mark by leaving various historical sites and buildings in Hungary.

They also take part in the Kurultaj and trade is cordial.

Finland and Estonia are kind of like the new curious, I guess, maybe were related cousins.

They never really thought about each other until just a few centuries ago.

They encounter maybe once a year and just kind of nod with a small smirk when they're in the presence of each other.

Now, when it comes to their best friend,

Nick, I've heard a lot of things from other Hungarians.

Who do you think is the best friend of Hungary?

Paprika!

Of countries?

Ohh?!

Poland! Yes!

They even have a Polish-Hungarian friendship day on March 23rd. Both countries have shared ties since the middle ages.

Their rulers often intermarried and exchanged headship, they fought numerous battles together side by side,

support each other's revolutions, struggled together under soviets and came out together even closer than ever.