Historical Hungary

While making my way through the main square of the city before we had to get to a name day and birthday party, I tried to take some pictures of some famous landmarks in Debrecen (forgive me for crooked horizons on them). This is a fountain located between two of the major statues. The square also has a couple famous churches, the most famous being the yellow one and the hotel on the corner which I believe is translated to the Golden Bull.

My host family also took me to the national park of the Hungarian Plains to show me the traditional Hungarian horsemen. Its very flat here and very dry (it hasn't rained since I've been here). Any trail is completely made of dust and really dirties a car. Their traditional horseman clothing is shown in another picture I took of the man and woman (both in traditional clothing) watching the grazing animals. They also wore a very thick hand embroidered coat, that looked incredibly hot to me, all year. It kept them warm in the winter and they used it to lay on in the summer. The girls would wear simple dresses and the women would wear skirts with 8 layers so it would billow out. The eggs are hand painted using wax and dyes and are common around Easter similar to the eggs Ukrainians make.

There are also a couple video clips of their traditional music. The man playing the clarinet was playing songs that are well known to all small children (my host sister and mother were singing the words) and I was told by one of my host relatives that it is not gypsy music. There is a very large difference between the cultures if you were to ask either a Hungarian or a Romanian. The small group playing is playing songs that were for their festivals and holidays to dance to. The videos are not the best, I'm sorry. The crowds have a way of ushering you on quickly and my camera only had a little bit of room left on it. But I wanted to show you all how it sounded as well as looked.