Hungarian Globe: Mandiner's Blog on Hungary in English

The year: 1861. The city: Vienna. According to a popular account, a reporter for the Viennese newspaper Donau Zeitung wrote a story about a Hungarian who entered a bookshop in Vienna and made the following request: "Geben Sie mir Globus von Ungarn." Give me a globe of Hungary. The story gave birth to an expression, a reference to the very special world of Hungarians. It's a world where the inhabitants have difficulty seeing anything beyond the Carpathian Basin and, conversely, a curious world opaque to foreigners, who are at pains to understand this odd, Asiatic people in the middle of Europe, and not only because of their peculiar language. With this phrase in mind, with equal parts of affection and irony, we set out to write about Hungarian affairs on Hungarian Globe.

Mandiner has planned for years to publish an English-language version of our blog and with today's launch of Hungarian Globe, our dream has finally become reality. Hungarian Globe will focus on Hungarian politics and current events and, from time to time, report on other colorful aspects of life in Hungary. With original content, we aim to offer to an English-speaking audience the same kind of thought-provoking, first-person narratives that readers of our Hungarian edition have grown to expect from Mandiner.

We started Mandiner three years ago as a centre-right community for news and opinion, a forum for stories and perspectives we couldn't really find anywhere else. But our work in publishing goes back further. Much of the team who now produces Mandiner previously published the Hungarian magazines UFi and Reakció.

Our Hungarian blog is one of the oldest and among the most popular political blogs on the Hungarian scene, featuring more than 50 contributing bloggers. Our news and opinion site mixes original works with reviews of news and opinions published elsewhere in the Hungarian media.

Although Mandiner is focused on politics, we also publish several thematic editions in Hungarian. Check out Mandiner.bor on wines, Mandiner.CSR about corporate social responsibility issues, Mandiner.kerékpár about bicycles, Mandiner.média about media and publishing, Mandiner.Balaton about our beloved Lake Balaton, and Mandiner.fesztivál on festivals and events in the country.