The capital of Hungary is Budapest, which is also the largest and most populated city. Other major cities are Győr in the west, Pécs and Szeged in the south, Debrecen in the east and Miskolc in the northeast. Hungary is a unitary state, divided into 19 counties. There are also 23 towns with county rights. The capital – Budapest – is independent of any county government.

The official language is Hungarian, the 13th most widely spoken first language in Europe with around 13 million native speakers. It’s also one of the official languages of the European Union. There are many rural dialects spoken countrywide, though standard Hungarian is based on the variety spoken in Budapest. An interesting fact is that Hungarian is a member of the Uralic language family and distantly related to Finnish and Estonian.

Hungary’s geography is defined by its two main waterways, the Danube and the Tisza. These two rivers divide the country into three sections: Dunántúl (literally “beyond the Danube” or Transdanubia), Tiszántúl (“beyond the Tisza”), and Duna-Tisza köze (“between the Danube and Tisza”). Transdanubia is a primarily hilly region which includes the very eastern stretch of the Alps (called Alpokalja), the Transdanubian Mountains in the central region, and the Mecsek and Villány Mountains (both famous for their vineyards) in the south. The northern part of the country is covered by the foothills of the Carpathians. Hungary’s highest peak with its 1014 metres, The Kékes, is also found here. The country is home to the world’s largest thermal water cave system and the second largest thermal lake – „Hévíz” in Hungarian, the largest lake in Central Europe – Lake Balaton – and Europe’s largest natural grasslands – The Great Hungarian Plain or „Alföld” in Hungarian.