Hungarian-style house, Croatia. Historically fluid migrations.Any travel to Eastern Europe highlights the fluidity of boundaries and conquests of neighbors as well as outside invaders. This is also seen in the architecture.
The histories of rulers show much back and forth as nationalities emerged, identified and coalesced. Here is a Hungarian house in Croatia.
See other Hungarian houses and populations in Romania Road Ways, and Romania Road Ways, Vlad Tepes sites.
There find a history of rulers and interactions and influence by Hungary throughout the Balkans and Eastern Europe that are just barely echoed now in modern Hungary, focused as is now for the tourist at Budapest.
Janos Hunyadi. John the Hungarian.
In particular, meet Janos Hunyadi: The ruler who raised Vlad the Impaler from a child to adulthood, as part of a child-rearing hostage situation, as was not unusual at the time, and later killed Vlad's father, and his castle in Romania at Hunedoara. See Romania Road Ways, Hunedoara.
"Hungar! Hungar!" would spit out a friend's Romanian parent, at the reference to Hungarians. No decent person would associate. Times do not change. Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hungarian invasions elsewhere, others' invasions into Hungary. No answers to how to live together.
Pride in history and heritage.
Houses. See the blends. Hungarian houses are wooden and distinctive in Croatia, even near the capital of Croatia, Zagreb: this one at Sisenik. Many Croatian homes are stone, stucco. The wooden ones do stand out. I also recall that the Venetians and others used Croatia as a timber source for their ships and buildings at home. So much is deforested. Balance that concept with the fact that other countries that could use the abundance of wood to build homes, did so with fine decorations, borrowing from each other, and the fluidity idea grows. See Poland Road Ways, Traditional Zakopane.
Location, location, location.
Hungary served as a buffer against the Ottoman Empire's expansion, at a time when the rest of Christendom was not paying attention, too involved with other intrigues - see http://www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/thou/thou04.htm. See also the overview of Muslim expansion in a quick summary at Europe Road Ways, Themes, Muslim Expansion. This massive defense effort further developed superior military skills - Hungarians were already legendary horsemen - but also a depletion of other resources.
Losses remembered, the drive to recoup.
Read about Hungary as an Axis force in WWII at ://www.feldgrau.com/a-hungary.html. So much war is about regaining lost turf. If that is so, is stability ever possible so long as there is memory.
