A variegated region wants to reveal its varied features to its visitors. Picturesque rivers, flat plains, nature conservation areas with woods and bogs, arboretums with rich flora - all these can be found in the Northern Great Plain.

In this region we can find small churches built in Roman times, wonderful bell-towers and baroque churches rising skywards. Luxury hotels and tidy small farms receive visitors arriving from near and far. In museums and period houses, we can see artefacts from past ages.

We can rest in pleasant thermal baths or cure ourselves in renowned spas. We can wonder at galloping herds, unusual mammals and rare species of birds in national parks that preserve our natural heritage. (Hortobágyi National Park is part of UNESCO's World Heritage.) The region is especially rich in small game; we can hunt pheasant, hare or deer. The Northern Great Plain has many faces, and we will love all that we come to know. And he who loves this area loves all of Hungary.

The Hortobágy National Park became a World Heritage Site in the heart of Europe and is unique in its preservation of its interesting things and treasures. The 80,000 hectare National Park is itself bigger than Nevada and whoever looks at this area as just the "Puszta" would be wrong: a good part of the area is salty meadows but there is a huge lakes system here as well. More than 40% of this area is boggy, marshy, and swampy. It is the grazing "gulya", the towering pole wells, the "délibáb" (mirage), and the hard-working "Puli" dogs who round up the flocks.

Hajdúszoboszló
Oil prospectors conducting test drilling in 1925 hit upon iodine-bromine salt thermal water, which changed the life of this small town. Although the first bathing facility was erected within just a few years, the real rush to develop only happened in the following 40 years. The baths were constantly expanded and modernised, and more pensions and hotels established, among them hotels with their own baths and medical departments.
Hajdúszoboszló's attractions are enhanced by the famous Hortobágy Puszta, one of the country's most visited tourist destinations, only a few kilometres away. The largest city in Eastern Hungary, Debrecen, is not far; it is the cultural centre for the region.

The city of Debrecen (230 km east of the capital) is known as a focal point of science, culture, the arts and, last but not least, religion. As centre of the Hungarian Reformed Church, Debrecen is frequently termed the "Calvinist Rome". The expansive bath complex has grown up in one of the most attractive parts of the city, in the Nagyerdõ (Great Forest) Park. Medicinal waters containing chloride, bromide, iodine and hydrogen-carbonate are used for those with locomotor disorders. The modern therapy centre in Debrecen is barely ten years old; the 4-star Thermal Hotel (opened in the summer of 1998), which meets the very highest standards, has been built directly over the centre.