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Firstly, we have to distinguish the home- made- style dishes and the restaurants' ones.
My grandmother worked as a chef in a military kitchen so she knows everything about the traditional way of cooking. This type of cuisine is hard to stomach. For my fiancé it is difficult to eat my grandma's cooking, because he didn't accustomed to eat those types of meal that we did. It is not unhealthy just difficult to digest and we prefer the rest of the afternoons for a half an hour.

Meanwhile the home-made cake is always more praised than the confectionary that we can buy in a patisserie. During weddings it is commonly accepted in Hungary that grandmothers and female relatives bake cakes since it is more delicious as the patisserie ones.

I think that restos pay more attention on the ingredients and that they do not use much fat. The issue of health becomes more and more important in Hungary.
Nevertheless in food Hungarians prefer the spicy ingredients (not personally, but generally men like those) such as hot paprika powder. We sprinkle it on soup. For example, they put it in fish soup. In Hungary the fish breeding is widespread and some towns and villages are famous for their fish (Szeged, Baja)

We mostly consume pork and chicken meat. We have some specialities such as Gulyás soup, Hortobágyi palacsinta - a savoury crepe filled with veal, Húsleves - clear chicken (or veal meat) soup with soup vegetables and thin soup pasta, stuffed cabbage, Gundel Palacsinta - pancake filled with nuts and chocolate sauce. Our most famous cake is Dobos torta - sponge cake layered with chocolate paste and glazed with caramel and nuts. Oh, I'm hungry now for some chocolate...

As far as the religion is concerned, the great majority of our population is Catholics. Debrecen is an exception, of course. My city is famous for the Protestantism. You can hear about Debrecen as "The Calvinist Rome". The city is considered as the centre of Hungarian Calvinist followers in the same way as Rome is the headquarters for his Catholics believers.

I am baptised in the Reformed Church but I think about this whole system in a different way. Meanwhile I believe in God and Jesus Christ.

Now I am reading a really interesting book. The author is Ervin Baktay who was a Hungarian explorer of India. He was converted to Christianity but his love and interest in culture and religion of India such as Buddhism or Hinduism was remained in his heart. He found great values in eastern culture too and he was Catholics at the same time. He grabbed the roots and common values of these religions and his profound thoughts characterise his works.

Protestantism in Debrecen has roots that originate at the beginnings of reformation. There was a symbolical debate between a protestant priest and a Catholics abbey. The latter claimed that Protestantism will not gain popularity in the city. He crushed a branch of a bush and planted it in the ground saying that this branch will grow up if the city becomes protestant. Today in the main place we can see this bush, which has been growing for 400 years and its existence prove the legend.

The most famous buildings of Protestantism in Debrecen are Great Church and Reformed College. The latter serve as reformed school since 1538. The University's faculties come from this building, which had not enough space to accommodate the increasing number of students. So the city built the imposing building of University. Here you can read about the details and the system of university:

The other most important building is the Great Church which has historical meanings too. During the revolution and the war of independence of 1849, Debrecen became the capital of the country for a short period of time and our patriots and statesmen declared Hungary's independence among the Great Church's walls.
Under you can see some pictures about the church.

As we started our trip in the nature at the beginning of month, let me finish it there too.
Here you can see the top of the University's Church.

In Transdanubia, it is a region of Hungary, we went on a hike:

In this picture, there is a cut trunk, which symbolise Eve and Adam's tree according to the legend. Two huge oaks lied on the shore of the river Gaja for ages. The bigger was Adam's and the smaller was Eve's tree. Adam's oak was the victim of the fire and nowadays there is only a one oak, which serves as bridge on the river.

Have a nice summer!
With love,
Zsuzsi (Susan)