The Probably Cherry Tree of Gellért Hill

All things considered, I was doing pretty well with my exploration of the lesser known Budapest project, resisting the easy temptations of Városliget and Margitsziget whenever the sun is shining. Actually, I do go to Margitsziget pretty much all the time, but no matter how I look at it, running with a DSLR is still…

Spring in the Buda Arboretum

We went into the weekend under the dark auspices of one of those classical Budapest weather forecasts, which claimed that we’d again have two miserable days before spring came back on Monday. But either spring was very stubborn, or the crystal globe was broken, because the sunshine soldiered on.  To fair to the meteorological institute,…

Saturday Starts at the Hunyadi Market

It might sound somewhat odd from someone who is particularly ill fitted for both haggling and cooking (I have an impression this blog is slowly turning into a litany of all the things I can’t do), but I have an irrational love of markets. Not that I buy much, see probable reasons above. I simply…

The Budapest Saint Patrick’s Day Parade 2017

I was planning to start the post with a diatribe on how, since we attend the Budapest Saint Patrick’s Day Parade each year (it has just turned the respectable age of seven), I will run out of subjects to cover, but, alas, this is exactly how I started the post last year- congratulating myself here…

Forest at the End of Town

In an odd turn of events last Saturday happened to be almost irrationally sunny and pleasant by Budapest weekend standards, which state that fine weather should invariably turn miserable at 6 PM on Friday. Or perhaps at 7 AM on Saturday, so those ridiculous souls who are awake at that ungodly hour will have a…

I Was The Sziget Guinea Pig, So You Don’t Have to Be-The 2017 Edition

Since last year’s very efficient guinea pigging allowed me to put on the radar any previously unknown, but perhaps promising acts, thus avoiding that atrocious moment when you realize you kind of fancy someone right after they’ve played Sziget, I might as well make a tradition of it. Three Sziget announcements have given me enough material…

A Trailer to Spring 2017

So it’s that time of the year again when on March the 1st I wake up, look out the window, notice the same drab morning grays, the same freezing dachshund in tiny pink overcoat being dragged along by a heavily indisposed human, the same slightly annoying drizzle, the same child wielding a particularly pointy umbrella…

Barlove: Espresso Embassy

I’ll cut straight to the chase: in my humble yet I would say pretty well informed opinion, based on downing hundreds, if not thousands of coffee cups in a wide array of Budapest establishments which offer it these days, Espresso Embassy is the best. Since it’s also among the first third wave coffee shops to…

Black and White February

Since it now really seems that spring is finally around the corner, with temperatures, ahem, soaring above 5 and sometimes even 10 degrees Celsius, the fog mostly gone in the morning and some occasional sun too, I felt I should gather all the leftover fog, mist and various other levels of gloom shots in sort…

Astronautalis @ Dürer Kert

It amuses me to no end how certain so to speak encyclopedic sites, such as IMDb and Wikipedia often give what is basically an ethnic recipe to people, most of all Americans and Canadians, who are quite obviously bound to be the fruit of rather diverse lineages. So and so is of Welsh, Dutch and…