Board 8 > Is Hungary in Eastern Europe?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I say no. Not a fan of AoE2 lumping it in with Slavs and Bulgarians and such.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Europe

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Yeah I hate it when people arbitrarily draw lines between land

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I grew up in the 80s and the land division was influenced by the Iron Curtain, at least in my mind.

Uglyface2 posted...

I grew up in the 80s and the land division was influenced by the Iron Curtain, at least in my mind.

This is the only way it makes sense to call Hungary an Eastern European country, but the developers of AoE2 should have known better that. Outside of the 45-46 years of Soviet occupations no one breaks Europe into a simple East/West dichotomy. Given the scope of AoE, they should be defining Europe in the much broader context where Hungary is Central Europe (ie part of one of the central powers in WW1).

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Have you been to Budapest? It's absolutely the gateway into eastern European culture

I mean, if you're splitting Europe into Eastern and Western and have no other divisions, then Hungary clearly falls into Eastern.

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Central Europe, no ambiguity here at all unless you're trapped in a stupid cold war mindset

There's a perfect dividing line where the Baltics, Ukraine, Belarus and Romania start, why drag it anywhere else?


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My answer is dependant on the percentage of adult males who wear Adidas tracksuits in the country.

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Who divides Europe into eastern, western and central? Is Germany so different it needs to be separated from France?

ChichiriMuyo posted...

Outside of the 45-46 years of Soviet occupations no one breaks Europe into a simple East/West dichotomy.

Uh, yeah, okay, but considering none of us are older that WWII, that Soviet control looms pretty large. You can't tell me there isn't a difference between the state of east Germany and west Germany, which are supposed to be part of the same nation. Whether or not it was reasonable to do so before 1945, splitting east/west is absolutely reasonable and understandable. And if that's too "simple," then merely adding in a central is not going to cut it, either.


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Western and Eastern Europe can refer to the geography (in which case it's pretty dumb not to include central Europe) or it can refer to the culture, of which Hungary is 100% Eastern.

I always thought of Hungary as being Eastern Europe

Hungary has cultural connections to the east of Europe that go well beyond Soviet influence, for instance with Romania. I also dont really buy Central Europe as a concept because I dont see how you can group Germany with Poland over France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

I would therefore suggest the following:

Northern Europe - Iceland, Ireland, UK, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia.

Western Europe - France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Germany, Switzerland, Austria.

Southern Europe - Portugal, Spain, Andorra, Italy, San Marino, The Vatican, Malta, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey.

Eastern Europe - Czechia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia.

This is basically the UN definition only with Bulgaria in Southern Europe as it is geographically very southern and has ties with the rest if the balkans and Turkey.

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Lightning Strikes posted...

I also dont really buy Central Europe as a concept because I dont see how you can group Germany with Poland over France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

If one wishes to posit the existence of Central Europe, it would be the countries that were formerly part of the Holy Roman Empire. Theres plenty of historical and political justifications for that definition.

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By pretty much every metric it is eastern europe

Geographically it is in the eastern half of the continent. It was on the east half of the Iron Curtain. The architecture and religion are very eastern etc

The only time you would say it was any other grouping is if you get into the weeds and break the continent into 5-6 different regions, in which case it would be central europe

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There probably was a Central Europe before the iron curtain, but the iron curtain was kind of a big deal.

Maybe you could argue that the Eastern EU members nowadays are Central Europe, but then I would still group Hungary with Bulgaria.

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