SCENE HUNGARY IN NRW

4 months of Hungarian art and culture in NRW | 109 artists or companies from the Danube and Tisza on the Rhine and Ruhr | 14 host cities: Aachen, Bielefeld, Bochum, Bonn, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Essen, Hagen, Cologne, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Münster, Neuss, Oberhausen, Wuppertal  | 1 festival for curious neighbours, art enthusiasts and music lovers, for those with strong ties to home and those with itchy feet, for night owls and festival hoppers | And 10 reasons why going is a must:

1. Never again think of Hungary as the land of salami, peppers and goulash

2. Have something to do on a match-free evening during the World Cup, and have Péter Esterházy on your mind rather than Sönke Wortmann during the "Miracle of Bern"

3. Don't have to spend five days in a tent on an island on the Danube drinking warm Heineken and using portaloos in order to hear bands like Besh o droM, Pop Ivan and Little Cow

4. Journey through two red, white and green cultural landscapes at the same time without leaving a carbon footprint

5. Discover that the cultural capital, Pécs, exists not only in the newspapers and the pioneering 'German reunification' at Lake Balaton exists not only in history books

6. Get to know young Hungarian artists at premiere parties in Mülheim, cellar parties in Dortmund and at the turntable in Düsseldorf, and then boast about it on Facebook

7. Get reacquainted with old European dance celebrities such as Eszter Salamon, Pál Frenák and Josef Nadj, and the mythical Hungarian 'Wonder Deer'

8. Fetch books by Péter Nádas and records by Gábor Gadó off the shelf and get them autographed

9. Hear Tony Lakatos play sax in Wuppertal

10.Get itchy feet

10 a. Forget portaloos, forget CO2, forget Facebook

10 b. Buy a tent for the Sziget Festival, look up Pécs in the atlas, book a flight