I left for my unusually long (end of) summer holiday adamant that this would be, finally, ‘offline’ time. No more checking the latest insta snaps of friends with evidently better lives than mine, no more refreshing emails just in case, no more ending up on Bored Panda browsing cats with their heads stuck in tubes,…
Author: pocketdiarybudapest
This Fire In My Hands: Franz Ferdinand and Richard Ashcroft (Best Concerts of Sziget 2019 Part Six)
The crowd was a bit tetchy, perhaps bored, people doing the compulsory drinks and toilet rounds, the festival circuit of water in nature, from beer to stomach to mobile toilet. There was texting, snapchatting and whatsapping, modern(er) technologies replacing the desperate battle cry of ‘I am in front of the main stage where are you’…
Be the Cowboys: Jain, Years and Years, Tove Lo and Alma (Best Concerts of Sziget 2019 Part Five)
I will call this the ‘festival feel good gig’ section and will readily admit that I did not stay through all of these concerts. Except Alma’s, as I was making a political statement of sorts to pretty much no one but myself about being seriously underwhelmed by Foo Fighters and choosing ‘girly’ pop over ‘manly’…
Positive Energies: Parcels and IDLES (Best Concerts of Sziget 2019 Part Four)
If you’re looking for a grand design as to why Parcels and IDLES ended up in the same article, well, there isn’t any. Perhaps the fact that I was familiar with one song each from both bands: for IDLES, it was obviously Danny Nedelko. For Parcels, my ignorance goes deeper: I only realized I knew…
Europe Stage Exotica: Hearts Hearts and Satellites (Best Concerts of Sziget 2019 Part Three)
I’ve already written a bit about my Hearts Hearts story (because I have one) in this year’s preview post, and also about what it feels like staying in front of the Europe Stage for ‘smaller bands’, whatever that tag means- Alma started her Sziget adventure on the Europe Stage, has progressed to A38 and, if…
About a Saturday: The National and James Blake at Sziget 2019 (Best Concerts Part Two)
It was a perfect night, so I’ll start by complaining. The National had been delighting me with special posters for all their previous shows during this tour (evidence to be admired on their Instagram), they didn’t have one for Sziget. James Blake had been playing Assume Form, my favourite track from his latest album, as…
A Tale of Two Franks: Best Concerts of Sziget 2019 Part One
It all began with me not really being able to tell the ‘two Sziget Franks’ apart, making silly jokes along the lines of the bands being called Frank Turner and the Sleeping Rattlesnakes and Frank Carter and the Rattled Souls. Then, absolutely out of the blue, a friend who’d loved Frank Turner very much passed…
Five Concerts You Shouldn’t Miss On Sziget
There was a point in the run up to this year’s Sziget when I felt I am somehow less happy with the lineup compared to other years, maybe I still feel, just a little, that this is the case. Nevertheless, I did manage to summon five names that I’m really looking forward to seeing, and…
Procrastinator’s Log Stardate 0719
In case July was supposed to be the football free month (though frankly, why would there be a football free month at all?!), then July failed grandly at it. And how could it not fail, when it contained the closing stages of both the Women’s World Cup and the AFCON. Confession time: it took me…
Black Eagle, Blue Palace: A Day in Oradea
Growing up, one of the main tenets of our gang, often translated into footballing passions, was that out of the triad of neighbouring western Romanian cities ours (Arad) was the best. This was frankly contradicted by everything: Arad was the smallest, the economically least efficient and the one with the least spectacular architecture. Arguably, ours…
Pocket Diary Budapest 