Good things about Hungary
 

For a start - the climate is much better than in UK. Summers are full of sunshine, heat & blue skies. The best ever summer temperature recorded in UK is something like 35C - but that's going to happen for 8 weeks in Hungary.

And when it rains - it rains. So not month after month of drizzle.

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I must admit I find winters a bit grim but then I'm used to spending the last 13 winters on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. Anything in particular to look forward to during a Hungarian winter? Apart from summer of course.

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Talking with my mate last night on a curry night (very enjoyable with likewise folk), amongst many other subjects this one came up and we both agreed, Its great to live here, positives/negatives. If the moaner expats (which there are many) don,t like it ( without swearing lol ) "go back" to where you came from and moan in UK and live in "your" happiness, which will never be the case, with your comfortable/substatial income. :))))

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We're only really talking big winter Jan & Feb in most years. So there's snow on the ground.

You've just had Xmas/ New Year. Now just get on with your job in this miserable time of year.

Or get 2/3 weeks in Thailand in the middle! :)

Re: Good things about Hungary
 

Good things about Hungary,

The cost of living is fairly low and your money goes much further if you live on the local economy. In other words, do not buy or expect everything to be like it was back in the UK. Ask yourself why you came here? If you want everything to be just like it was back home in the UK, you will never be happy. altering an old addage to suit life in Hungary, "When in Hungary, Live as the Hungarians do"

Quality of most food is better than the UK especially garden items that can be sourced from your own garden or a farmers market. Cannot beat the cost either.

Housing is cheap in most of the country outside of Budapest and the lake region.

People are friendly and usually helpful.

The natural beauty of the country.

Not a huge tourist mecca nor overloaded with expats like France and Spain.

If you have an open mind and can remember your not back home in the UK, most people can make a go of it here.

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People, food/drink, climate, way of life, getting things done, most of all, the people!

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Having a countryside lifestyle I could never even dream of being able to afford in the UK. The food. Palinka........

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ditto .... I'm yet to move to Hungary but have visited enough times to know what to expect.

Re: Good things about Hungary
 

Great fresh fruit & veg shop in our quite small village. Cheap & good selection. The Co-Op is actually also generally OK for fruit & veg but nothing like the freshness, cheapness or selection.

It's not hard to be a vegetarian in Hungary if you prepare your own food, less easy if you like eating out!

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IMO they ought to develop a vaccine against that................................says this forums resident (extensive) beef farmer !!!!

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Where can people buy your beef?

I always find it hard to buy steaks. No problemo with the gulyas hus, it pays to order 2.5kg from Tesco whatever you're ordering then you get the whole chunk. Neck, thigh etc as they call it.

But steaks: I've had many a great steak in Hungary, yet fail to find a good place to buy the damned things.

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Yes, steaks that are of any quality are just about unobtainable at any price. I don't have an issue with paying for them. I have an issue finding them at all. I like them sliced about 3-4cm thick, I found some once at Tesco that may have been 8mm thick. Oh well, I guess we cannot have everything we want.

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Our animals go to the local slaughter house where they are inspected and processed and then we get back the meat for farm gate sales. We have a list of customers who we email notification of sales. We are a small farm so sales are not continuous and the requests for the beef are usually over subscribed. (Our herd is pedigree Hungarian Grey cattle and our farm is certified organic).

The majority of the meat sold in Hungary is pork and poultry, as you will see in the shops by the differing size of the display counters. Most of the beef in chain shops will be cow beef, fallout from the dairy industry, nothing wrong with it, just don't expect quality. The majority of the large producer beef goes to export because the Hungarian market prefers pork and poultry due to price and buying habits (the producers also get a better price by exporting). The same - but more so - applies to lamb, a good proportion of which goes to Italy and the only lamb you will see (occasionally) in Hungarian shops will be those that don't grade for export or will be mutton.

If you avoid supermarkets and can find a family butcher you should be able to get the cuts you want. Or search out a small producer doing farm gate sales or in a farmers market should also enable you to request what you want. Marinading beef in red wine (NOT white wine) over night in the frigde will improve marginal beef.

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No problem getting good steak in Budapest! Lamb however...

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A friend also sometimes brings us meat from a small farm - szürke marha (which of course is very expensive ...), mangalica pork and ducks ...
But the pieces are usually so big that my wife only cooks them when we have guests - for the two of us it's just too much.
When we have guests where just one wants a steak we go to our favourite restaurant:
Green Elephant in Zalaapáti
They also do the "new craze": sous-vide ;)
PS:
I still remember from 20 years ago - you couldn't even get stuff like pork tenderloin in a supermarket - all this went probably straight to the tourist restaurants, the locals wouldn't have paid for it ...

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As I am a 13 weeker, I can bring out a frozen joint or 2 with me on the plane - most holidays I bring out a leg of lamb and a decent joint of beef, at Xmas sometimes a turkey (though I'm not a big fan & nobody else seems to be in our family. That Xmas tradition could easily disappear - starting in 5 weeks' time lol). The rellies love the lamb & beef I serve up.

Another thing I haven't figured out yet: there are loads of goats around us, kept for milk/ cheese. Yet can I find any goat/ kid meat for sale? Can I bloggery. I'd really like to cook a few goat meat stews as I have enjoyed them abroad. Or kid souvlaki. Anybody have any luck sourcing goat meat?

Re: Good things about Hungary
 

I would like goat milk as it is good for the kids but I really don`t like goats! When we first moved over we were living with the in laws and they had goats. Evil things they were. I looked into their eyes and it was as staring into pools of darkness.....................

Good quality beef is quite rare. More rare however is being allowed to cook it appropriately. I.E. rare......

As an aside, is it usually much of an issue getting an abbatoir to kill say 2 pigs? Done the "Pig Feast" before a few times but not sure about finding a local butcher to help out down here. Just whether they will laugh me out of their office......

I was thinking a little further and while we are still in very early days the fact I can be an Ostermelo and actually have my own business doing something productive even if it is not going to make me rich is a plus point. Everyone loves honey and it is a good medium of exchange!

After Christmas building 7 raised beds at our new house and repairing the animal houses so hopefully the cost of living will take a big nose dive, the eldest is almost at an age where she can start helping properly with the garden and feeding the chickens at least.

I am looking forward to being rent free and never having to think (hopefully unless I do find myself forced on a plane back to the UK, but hope that will be highly unlikely) about mortgages and suchlike ever.

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Our local slaughter house will 'do' pigs for people and they will scald and gut them so the customer gets back a clean pig cut in half ready for further processing. Otherwise ask around the village as there is usually someone who will help with a pig kill for a fee or for part of the pig.

We have found that deep beds are better than raised beds because they don't dry out so easily and the soil stays cooler in the summer.

We have had to wire our chicken house all around and 50cm into the ground to deter the foxes and martins and wire over the top to keep out the birds of pray. So our poultry compound is 9m x9m totally enclosed with wire mesh. Luckily the wire came from some redundant game fencing and the posts from our forest so the cost was just time.

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We have a lot of concrete building blocks left over from the cowboy builder so am planning to use them. They are the larger foundation blocks and so will give a good depth of soil hopefully if I do two blocks deep. I am still furious about that. To the point I want to sell the Tanya and walk away completely from it and not have to drive past his in laws every day. My wife wants to keep it as apparently we have put too much in already, I am angry enough to burn down the house that`s there and rip everything up and sell it as scrap. I won`t though, but I don`t think I will ever get over it.

Oh we will fortify the chickens........

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Doubtless the concrete blocks will make good raised beds, but my point is that IMO you will be better off with the beds double dug into the ground with the surface of the bed just above ground level, this way when its 35 deg. and there has been no rain for 6 weeks or so the soil in the beds won't be quite as hot or drained as they would be if the beds were above ground level.

And you could always sell the blocks - if you have no other use for them.

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Yep I wouldn't do raised beds in Hungary (unless your land is a bit swampy/ marshy, I suppose).

But no dig principle is sound. I'm thinking of some tomato beds exactly like that, ie isolated from the surrounding area just like raised beds, maybe with some solid divider like a railway sleeper - but mostly sunk into the ground for the moisture. say - 20cm proud of the ground. I could get in a few cubic metres of topsoil (termofold) dead cheap (done it a couple of times before & it really helps fertility) to top up/ mix in. A patch of our land used to be a vineyard, we got rid of nearly everything when we put the 3 telek together but I insisted on keeping these 3 short rows of metal posts (oszlop) for my tomato & pea/ sugar snap pea growing days in retirement. Purely for ripe cherry tomatoes & peas/ sugar snap peas & maybe some interesting varieties not otherwise easily obtainable. Can't beat them fresh/ ripe from your own land.

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Just been reminded - the sound of church bells.

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Speaking of railroad sleepers, the property I bought has about 2 dozen concrete sleepers that someone that previously owned my place left here. If someone wanted them and could move them I would be willing to let them go for free. I reckon they weigh 3-400 kg each. I have no way to load them for someone but I thought I would throw it out here since the topic came up. They are near Kaposvar.

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On one of our vineyard plots somewhere near Velence To we had loads of concrete grapevine posts (ie you use them to support the wires that the grapevines grow up). Must have been several hundred as it's a big old plot. We decided to destroy the lot and so got the JCB/ diggers in, they managed to stack *most* of the concrete posts intact. Scratching our heads what to do with them, rather expensive to get carted away but could just have stayed there stacked in the corner, I suppose. Turned the plot over to alfalfa which a local farmer is dead pleased to get for free.

Anyway, to my surprise a neighbour asked if he could get all the concrete posts - did me a great favour! - and has used them to put a good secure fence around his own plot plus re-used some of them for grapevines. Good deal all round. He was so pleased that before we got the alfalfa going, he strimmed our plot for free to keep the parlag fu & other weeds at bay.

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Good to keep stuff out of landfills when it can be recycled. I wish there was a place online here in Hungary to advertise free items such as your post and my railroad sleepers here without having to pay. Much good material gets sent to the landfill or burned because no one knows about rehoming it.

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W e could start a topic like " Stuff to give away for free" .. and give it a go, before we throw it out:)

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Okay, I will start a thread and we will see how it goes, Maybe the Mods will sticky it for us. Hopefully, they will leave it here on the Hungarian Page.

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honestly i prefer UK weather. After 3 years in Scotland, Hungarian summer/winter is a bit too much for me

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well, it's kind of turning into one, esp around Vaci street and some more of the hip areas of the city

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this is why I'm heading to Hungary once our house is sold.

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Oddly, I much prefer the hot Hungarian summer, but several Hungarian friends who spent time working in the UK say they much prefer the summer there.
They keep whinging about global warming and that it will kill all the population within 50 years - I am pretty sure something far more basic is going to get me long before then!

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And on the subject of summer - the scent of the lime trees (linden) when they are in flower and picking the flowers for drying for tea during the winter.

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Ahh Yes!
The scent of summer for me is Honeysuckle, I have an arbor covered by a huge Honeysuckle and it is the perfect place to sit for early morning tea or evening tiple and enjoy the smell while the bees provide the sound track of summer.
Yes I know Honeysuckle grows equally as well in the UK so perhaps sliding slightly off topic, sorry.