Hungarian survival kit

In context: 5 scenes to get by

Cultural notes

1. Hungarian uses a very formal address with the pronoun Ön and the third person singular. With strangers or shopkeepers, this level of respect is expected. Targumi always uses formal address.
2. In Hungarian the order of family name and first name is reversed: people say Kovács János where a Frenchman would say Jean Kovács. Pay attention when your own name is announced in Hungarian style.
3. Hungarians rarely toast with beer. Tradition traces back to 1849 when Austrians allegedly celebrated the crushing of the revolution with beer: a century of symbolic self-imposed ban followed. Go for wine or palinka instead.
4. Paprika is the soul of Hungarian cuisine: sweet or hot, it colours goulash, porkolt and paprikash. The covered markets of Budapest (Nagy Vásárcsarnok) overflow with varieties worth packing home.
5. Thermal baths (Szechenyi, Gellert, Rudas) are a social institution, not just a tourist attraction. Bring your swimsuit, plan two to three hours and observe local rituals: hot-cold alternation, chess games in the water.
6. Restaurant tipping is around ten percent, given directly to the waiter by stating the total you wish to pay (never left on the table). Check the bill to see if service is already included, otherwise you pay twice.
7. Hungarian is an agglutinative language: one word can stack multiple suffixes to express what an entire sentence conveys in English. Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért contains seven suffixes: this is normal, do not panic.
8. Mentioning Liszt Ferenc, Bartók Béla, the mathematician Erdős Pál or the poet Petőfi Sándor is always welcomed: Hungarians take pride in their disproportionate share of inventors and Nobel laureates per capita.