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Hortobágy
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Hortobágy (Hungarian pronunciation: [ɦortobaːɟ]) is both the name of a village in Hajdú-Bihar county and an 800 km² national park in Eastern Hungary, rich with folklore and cultural history. The park, a part of the Alföld (Great Plain), was designated as a national park in 1973 (the first in Hungary), and elected among the World Heritage sites in 1999. The Hortobágy is Hungary's largest protected area, and the largest natural grassland in Europe.
Hortobágy is similar to a steppe, a grassy plain with cattle, sheep, oxen, and horses, tended by herdsmen, and it provides habitat for various different species (342 bird species have been registered to appear). Its emblematic sight is the Nine-holed Bridge, and this is the place for traditional sweep wells. Visitors might find mirage as well here.
Up to now it was known that this alkaline steppe was formed by cutting huge forests in the Middle Ages and then the river control of the Tisza finished this process with changing the soil's structure and pH. However, Hortobágy is much older, alkalinization started ten thousand years ago, when the Tisza found its way through the Great Hungarian Plain and "decapitated" the little rivers sourcing in the Northern Mountains. The real formation was finished by grazing animals, mammoths and wild horses in the Ice Age, and domesticated animals later.
Besides this, Hortobágy had a negative connotations. Hortobágy was a place where Hungarian Stalinists sent their political opponents to work as forced labour, especially after the Resolution of Informbiro (the same way as prison on Goli otok functioned in Tito's Yugoslavia and Baragan in Romania).
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