Hungary

Hungary is a landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin in Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Its capital is Budapest. Hungary is a member of EU, NATO, OECD, V4 and is a Schengen state. The official language is Hungarian, which is part of the Finno-Ugric family, thus one of the four official languages of the European Union that are not of Indo-European origin note Following a Celtic (after c. 450 BC) and a Roman (9 BC c. 430) period, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late 9th century by the Hungarian ruler Árpád, whose great-grandson Stephen I of Hungary was crowned with a crown sent from Rome by the pope in 1000. After being recognized as a kingdom, Hungary remained a monarchy for 946 years, and at various points was regarded as one of the cultural centers of the Western world. Hungary was partially occupied by the Ottoman Empire in the 16-17th centuries, after which it became part of the Habsburg Empire and later a constituent half of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy. A significant power until the end of World War I, Hungary lost over 70% of its territory, along with 3.3 million people of Hungarian ethnicity,[4] under the Treaty of Trianon,the terms of which have been considered excessively harsh by many in Hungary.[6] The country also lost five of its ten largest Hungarian cities. The kingdom was succeeded by a Communist era (19471989) during which Hungary gained widespread international attention regarding the Revolution of 1956 and the seminal move of opening its border with Austria in 1989, thus accelerating the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. The present form of government is a parliamentary republic (since 1989). Today, Hungary is a high-income economy, and a regional leader regarding certain markers. In the past decade, Hungary was listed as one of the 15 most popular tourist destinations in the world.The country is home to the largest thermal water cave system and the second largest thermal lake in the world (Lake Hévíz), the largest lake in Central Europe (Lake Balaton), and the largest natural grasslands in Europe (Hortobágy). ( wikipedia)