To me it seems like that in every West Slavic and East Slavic country from Czechia through Poland to Ukraine and Russia, mushroom-hunting is a very popular and widespread activity, people tend to have a large amount of knowledge about identifying edible mushrooms, and mushroom-based foods are very common. In Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, the Elektrichka regional trains even have so-called “mushroom stops” in the middle of nowhere, where people can get off the train to pick mushrooms.

Hungarian culture is generally very similar to the culture of Central European Slavic countries, but we don’t seem to have this large emphasis on gathering and eating mushrooms. We have fried mushrooms in most restaurants as a vegetarian option, and mushrooms as a pizza topping and as an occasional ingredient in stews, but it about stops there. The only person I know who went mushroom-hunting was my grandma, who grew up in a village near the Ukrainian border.

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