Wunderbar Festival, the Week of German Language

Starting on Monday, April 17, the six-day Wunderbar Festival will be open to audiences interested in German culture, film, science and gastronomy with around 200 events across Hungary.

The Wunderbar Festival is jointly organized by the Austrian and Swiss embassies, the Goethe Institute, the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Austrian Institute, according to a statement sent to MTI by the organizers.

The Csokonai Vitéz Mihály secondary school in Debrecen, eastern Hungary, organizes a German-language history and geography lesson for young people, the Institute of German Studies at the University of Debrecen is preparing an Austria quiz, while the German Cultural Forum is holding a career day for those who speak German but don't know what to do with it.

Also in Debrecen, the Mechwart András Mechanical Engineering and Information Technology Technical College holds a two-round country team competition for secondary school students from the Hajdú-Bihar County on the gastronomy of German-speaking countries. In the second round of the competition, the teams will prepare typical German, Austrian and Swiss dishes, which will be judged by a panel of judges.

Veszprém in western Hungary will also be linked to the festival in several ways: the closing gala of the Wunderbar festival and the award ceremony for the German Connected photo competition will take place in the theater hall of the Agóra Veszprém Cultural Center. The Eötvös Károly County Library will exhibit books on Hungarian-German cuisine, the Egry RoadDistrict Kindergarten will organize a program for kindergarten children together with the Hriszto Botev German Nationality School, and the László Gyulaffy German Nationality School will host a meeting of German nationality schools.

The Wunderbar Festival will also be joined by a number of universities, including the Universities of Szeged, Debrecen, Veszprém and Miskolc, Corvinus University and the Hagen Center for Distance Education in Budapest.

The German-speaking countries are Hungary's most important trading partners, with some 6,000 German, Austrian and Swiss companies operating in Hungary, providing jobs for more than 300,000 people. More than 300,000 Hungarian pupils study German in some 2,700 schools, and German is taught in 80 courses at 18 Hungarian universities. In addition, Budapest is home to the only all-German-language higher education institution outside the German-speaking area, Andrássy University, the press release points out.