We all have our favorite food or drinks so whenever there is a festival featuring those items we should be ready to attend. I was looking for some great food events in Hungary when I came across this small cute village representing the real authentic Hungarian culture and an amazing cherry festival – actually four events a year. Apparently Nagykörű is the sweet cherry garden of Hungary.
It is located in the Northern Great Plain region of central Hungary by the second most important river, Tisza. It is approximately 2 hours drive from Budapest. The Great Plain has the perfect ‘terroir’ for growing vegetables and fruits, and Nagykörű became famous of its delicious cherries. The village is very colorful especially when the cherry trees blossom. There is a beautiful Baroque church and many old traditional houses, while you can take a walk along the river Tisza. The dam also gives you a pleasant experience of the countryside with its green scenery and wandering Hungarian Grey cattle and Racka sheep. River Tisza allows visitors to engage in some water sport activities such as canoeing, rowing and swimming.
The first settlers arrived around 1067, while they had a monastery that was founded by the Johannites or the knights of Malta in the 13th century. It was destroyed when the Turkish attacked Hungary. Their church existed as early as 1330.
Cherry production started in the Middle Ages, while George Petrovay was a landlord, who made cherry trees grow abundantly and created new species. The area now takes up more than 200 hectars.
The village’s various terrain, folklore buildings and fairs and food events attract many tourists every year. There is a Folklore museum is a cultural center, which also a landmark and historical place. You can learn old traditional craftmanships there like broom making, wicker basket making, and they have an outdoor old-style oven where they bake their cake, the cirkos cake. Another building belongs to the center offers accommodations for tourists.
They have different events all year around and one of them is the Cherry Festival in June, which should be a must-go attraction for those love cherries and eco-tourism. This event you can find many stalls in the market place where they offer home made products to taste or purchase such as cherry goat cheese, cherry syrup, cherry jams, cherry liquors, cherry ice cream, etc. They have folklore music and dancers, traditional rituals and religious activities, concerts, games, outside cooking and learning artisan crafts making.
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