It’s the first day in full swing, and a hot and humid one- long queues clog the entrances and all the locations are now up and running. There’s circus and opera, street theatres and movies, a beach and a gym, so it seems a bit of a stereotype choice to start the day at…
Sziget 2014 Diary- Day Zero
The only plausible reason as to why Brody Dalle isn’t on the main stage at a much later time slot is that she has too many of the good things, namely X chromosomes. Any man with half her guitar skills and energy would be a celebrated rock god-well, you know, her husband IS, though…
Sziget 2014 Diary- Day Minus One
Sziget should be globally considered as the mother of all festivals for the simple reason that it’s so much longer than most. This year the hardcore Sziget dwellers could move in as early as Saturday, and most venues were already fully functional, even if some will start their programme in earnest only on Wednesday. So…
Arctic Monkeys @ VOLT
When I finally go to see Pulp, The Stones Roses and Blur on Sziget a good decade or two after their heyday, I could not help feeling just a bit left out- they were a generation or so older than mine, and when I finally got around to listening to Blur’s first albums with a…
Foals @ VOLT Festival
Sending Foals on before Thirty Seconds to Mars and Steve Aoki is a bit like making it to the final four of the World Cup and then shooting yourself in the leg. There is of course absolutely no sense and logic in the existence of the latter two acts: neither of them play music, nor…
Wonders of Tihany
Truth be said, I am not much of a Balaton person. I would never imagine it as the location of a summer holiday for it is, most definitely, a lake and as such misses those crucial elements of a seaside, such as the salt breeze and the rumble of the waves. The water is also…
Party with the Potatoes: Gorillaz Sound System @ Budapest Essentials Urban Festival
There was a bit of apprehension on people’s faces as they walked onto the main aisle of the Great Market Hall on Saturday evening, and quite a lot of it on the faces of the few grocers who had their stands open throughout the Gorillaz Sound System DJ set. So technically it was more than…
George Ezra @ Budapest Essentials Urban Festival
So this is what happens to you when you sit in Bristol and decide to write a song about a random European city, ostensibly because it sounds good. Well yes, Budapest does sound good.And luckily so does the song, therefore the people of the city immediately take to you as an unsung hero of their…
Emir Kusturica & The No Smoking Orchestra@Budapest Park
So here goes Emir being silly with a band.He’s not much of a guitar player, that’s for sure. He does however make up for what could be a rather fatal flaw, given that this is a concert after all, by being generally entertaining in his usual slightly over the top way. Occasionally one can get…
Easter in the Making
I usually had two Easters growing up (one Orthodox, one Protestant, one Romanian, one Hungarian) and I never really discriminated between the two, since they meant twice the excitement of Easter eggs. It also took some pressure off Easter- if it wasn’t pitch perfect the first time around, there was always the second try. …
Pocket Diary Budapest 