Bezenye

Bezenye is a village in the north-west of Hungary. It is very close to the border with Slovakia and only 9 km from the Slovakian capital city Bratislava. The population is about 1600.

Archaeologists have found things under the ground which show that the first people to lived there were Old Germanic tribes. Later, Hungarian (Magyar) people lived there. Then troops from Turkey destroyed a lot of the village and the people fled. New people came to live in the area: Croatians and Germans. The Croatians called the village "Bizonja" and the Germans called it "Palersdorf". "Bezenye" is the Hungarian name. It comes from a Slav word "baza" meaning an elderberry tree.

After World War II many of the poorer Germans had to go and live in Germany. New Hungarian families from Slovakia came to live in Bezenye.

Today Bezenye is not a typical Hungarian village. The people speak a mixture of Hungarian, Croatian, Slovak and German. The Roman Catholic church of the Blessed Virgin Mary has services in Hungarian and Croatian.

References

• "The Slovak-Austrian-Hungarian Danubeland", compiled by Daniel Kollár; ISBN 80-88975-20-4

Other websites

• Bezenye.hu
• Street map (Hungarian) Archived 2007-10-01 at the Wayback Machine