As some might know we help our guests reserve tables in Budapest restaurants. This is a free service we offer, and more and more people use this help. In March we helped quite a lot of people, and the three most popular restaurants based on our amount of table reservations were the following:
1) Sir Lancelot
2) Mátyás Pince
3) Trófea Grill
In April it seems as if the list might change a bit, but there are still many days left in this month, so time will show!
Many of the international people in Budapest are curious about what it is like to make the driving license in Budapest. They look for english speaking teachers, but that is not really what this article is about.
Some weeks ago a friend of mine made his second try to get his driving license in Budapest. The first did not succeed and the reason was a mistake he made during the driving. The second time he failed as well, but he received no real explanation. Though, afterwards the teacher pulled him aside and told him that it would only work if he payed, around 20,000 Ft. As I heard about it I was quite shocked. Since then I forgot about it all.
Today I met the wife of my friend, and she happily told me that the boy got his driving license today. I asked if he payed… and yes he did! Congratulations!
I heard about this in cities outside Budapest, but I did not really know that this existed in Budapest. When I made my driving license I used Csigavér and there were absolutely no problems. The teacher was great, and we did not have to give any money except from what was the actual cost for the driving lessons and for the exam. I failed once, but that had nothing to do with money; for the first time in my life I did not recognize a red lamp… Suddenly my teacher stepped on the brake, and I understood that I had failed. But the second time everything was perfect, and since then I have my driving license!
Car rental in Budapest
The Sziget Festival is approaching and the list of artists coming are frequently updated with new names. We are updating our Sziget festival page as well, and today we added the following artists to the list of artists and band featured at the festival:
Armin van Buuren, Backyard Babies, Birdy Nam Nam, Blasted Mechanism, Bloc Party, Calexico, Coldcut, De Staat, Die Toten Hosen, Disco Ensemble, Donots, Expatriate, Fatboy Slim, Figli Di Madre Ignota, Guajiro Mirabal, Haydamaky, Jesus Ramos, Klaxons, Manuel Galbán, Matatu, Miloopa, Pendulum, Placebo, Ska-P, Snow Patrol, So Kalmery, Speed Caravan, Squarepusher, Tankcsapda, The Offspring, The Prodigy, The Ting Tings,Tiken Jah Fakoly.
I am just sitting in front of my computer (April 2, 2009), and then suddenly it seems like if something is happening. My google toolbar is starting to give values I have not seen before. In the last weeks I have been working some on a page called WorldConcerts.org and it deals with concerts around the world. Suddenly some minutes ago I saw that it had a toolbar value of 2 (yesterday it had nothing).
At the same time all the Budapest guide pages have remained the same values, except from the fact that the Dutch fact seems to have gone from page rank 3 to nothing (grey value). The same happened with the Hungarian page earlier, but then it received its page rank 3 value back within some days. So, maybe that is what will happen now as well.
It seems as if this Budapest Guide (the english one) is stuck on page rank 4, if nothing changes within the coming hours and days. That is nice as well, but it would be really cool to continue the walk upwards on the page ranking rank!
I just wrote a text yesterday about learning Hungarian and private teachers in Budapest, and of course that has not received any value yet. But, if you should be interested, the page can be found here, and another page we recommend if you are looking for private Hungarian teacher, can be found here.
George Benson is coming to Budapest in 2009, and he will perform in Papp Laszlo Budapest Sportarena. The concert will be held July 22, 19:30.
George Benson Budapest
Papp Laszlo Budapest Sportarena
July 22, 19:30
Tickets available from Eventim
Concerts and events in Budapest
About George Benson (Source: Eventim)
Appreciated as both musician and performer by millions, George Benson has always had the duel personae of expert improviser and vibrant entertainer. He has always placed his keenly discerning art in the service of a rousing good time. Rounding out his singular approach with sly, seductive rhythm and blues, he’s earned himself an impeccable reputation as one of music’s most enterprising and engaging stars.
Few might have predicted that striking level of stardom some forty years ago, when Benson was a fledgling guitarist working the corner pubs of his native Pittsburgh. That’s where his yen to please a crowd was born. “I was an entertainer first,” he says proudly “As a kid I sang, danced and played the ukelele in a nightclub. As my career has progressed, I’ve had the pleasure of playing with the baddest jazz cats on the planet. But that doesn’t change my desire to entertain folks. That’s really who I am.”
It was Wes Montgomery, one of jazz’s most creative players, who came across Benson early on; the vet complimented the young guitarist, urging him to continue his already impressive work. In the early 1960s, Benson apprenticed with organist Brother Jack McDuff; he found the organist’s gritty swing a fertile ground for the sly, confident and adventurous guitar lines which earned him an early rep as a master.
“Jack turned me on to a lot of stuff,” muses Benson. “A lot of the jazz tunes we played together were danceable, and that furthered my understanding of what people wanted. When jazz was danceable, it was king. The intellectual stuff that came later on – Charlie Parker and all that – turned toward a brainier sound. That was good, and I dug it. But I really like when people kick up their heels and go crazy.”
Montgomery had called one of his best records Boss Guitar. Benson had both the conviction and chops to nip at his hero’s heels; his 1964 debut was released as The New Boss Guitar. It lived up to its title. Benson’s tone was juicy, and his blues solos sparkled with a carefully honed logic. A jaunty funk and swing aesthetic prevailed. By the time legendary talent scout John Hammond signed Benson to Columbia, the guitarist’s name was bubbling throughout the industry. His work for the label proved Hammond’s hunch to be on-target: brains and flash were in perfect synch.
“I’d sat down with a great blind pianist from San Francisco name Freddy Gambrel,” recalls Benson. “He turned me onto some wonderful ways to get in and out of chord changes and weld harmonies together. Of course I still wanted to be like Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, and Hank Garland – my heroes. I’ve always liked the hot guitar guys.”
Playing the combination won Benson access to all sorts of arenas. His work was boundless: in the late ’60s he sat in on heady Miles Davis sessions, and also put a personal spin on the tunes from the Beatles’ Abbey Road. Hooking up with the CTI label in 1970, he was united with many of jazz’s finest instrumentalists, including Stanley Turrentine, Ron Carter, and Freddie Hubbard. His visibility and prestige grew even further. Classic albums, such as Beyond the Blue Horizon, abounded. But after a while different ideas began to flow from Benson’s muse. And the environment didn’t seem right for growth.
“I’d been screaming about my guitar sound for years, and they didn’t want to hear about it. I wanted to use my band in the studio, just get comfortable and test out some stuff. But it was like pulling teeth. The first time I tried to sing along with my guitar, everybody in the studio booed. They all said that it wouldn’t work. When I got with Tommy LiPuma all that changed. He said ‘Sure, let’s go with some vocals, see where we get.’ And you know what happened after that.” What happened was Breezin’, the first jazz record to attain platinum sales. The 1976 blockbuster, his first in a long association with Warner Bros. Records, brought the instrumental title track to jazz radio. And Benson’s soulful update of Leon Russell’s “This Masquerade,” which featured the guitarist scatting along with his solo break, was a pop smash. He followed up with a sultry version of “On Broadway,” and the irresistible “Give Me The Night,” which thrilled many a dancer. Benson was a superstar.
Some old fans were miffed about this new pop success. “I guess that’s the biggest crime I’ve made as far as jazz lovers go,” offers Benson. “They don’t always like to see you play for the general public. They want to be catered to. But I’ve tried that approach and it doesn’t work for me. Nobody can stay one way for 30 years. I’ve always tried to let my experience show itself. You learn, you change. The door opened and I walked through it.” Throughout the 1980s Warner Bros. and LiPuma followed their smash success with several terrific Benson records. Individually, they blended grooves and guitar work, proving that R&B was a natural part of Benson’s profile. Collectively, they cemented his global renowned. The guitarist has won eight Grammies, played around the world, and thrilled many crowds with his playing.
In the mid-’90s Benson followed LiPuma to the GRP label. Their association had proven artistically and commercially fertile; both wanted to sustain it. Together they cut the 1996 gem That’s Right. It offered a modern version of contemporary jazz that reminded its listeners Benson was one of the genre’s forefathers. These days Benson’s interests are many. He’s often spotted out at Manhattan jazz clubs, checking the action of fledgling guitarists. The most impressive of the lot are sometimes invited back to Benson HQ for jam sessions and stylistic powwows. The guitarist is resolute about keeping the sparkle in his playing.
“The younger cats awaken something in me from the early days. I love listening and playing with guys like Joshua Redman, Roy Hargrove, and Christian McBride. When they tell me I’ve still got the chops, I feel great.” Benson’s latest GRP disc is Standing Together. It not only assures that his chops are sharper than ever, but suggests that his studio savvy is continuing to grow. This time around, he uses elements of hip hop and Caribbean rhythms to keep his personalized R&B on the edgy side.
“I’m not against ear candy,” he chuckles, “but I like mine to be significant, not just noises in the record. Some of those backing tracks on the new record are cool. They give me little tidbits of sound to bounce my guitar lines off of.” Said like a open-minded creative type, which is exactly who Benson is. Unfazed by the constrictions of predictability, he’s built a career on sniffing out what people enjoy hearing, and what he enjoys playing. “I had to break a couple rules along the way,” he reflects. “There was an unwritten law: be cool, don’t get too raunchy. But jazz was once hanging-out music. And the easiest way to involve people is by getting ’em tapping their feet. When they’re tapping a bit, they’ll go your way. That’s when I can float any kind of jazz line into the music. Once the audience knows I respect them, they let me be whatever I want to be. I hope – no, I firmly believe – that will always be the case.”
With permission from the writers we hereby publish a letter we recently received from a couple that had been to Budapest. Enjoy the reading, and listen to their advices in the end of the email. If anyone else should have experiences to share you can write a comment, or send us your own travel letter and we will publish that as well!
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This may be late but nevertheless. My wife and I visited Budapest Mar 21 – 25, specifically to experience the city as well as to take in AC/DC. What a blast we had!!!! The people in Budapest were more than friendly, they were beautiful and sweet. The Budapest card for travel was a godsend, what a great idea. The food was spectacular. And the scenery was one of a kind. The history of the region was very numbing. How much crap that area has put up with the last 1000’s of years is amazing, yet Budapest keeps re-inventing itself. It was a trip we will remember for a lifetime and we thank the people of the city of Budapest. Just wish we would have known of this website before we visited, perhaps next time.
P.S. Warn you visitors of getting fake forints back from cab drivers as change, happened to us and when I presented it to a vendor a fight almost ensued. Lesson learned for me as I should have been more educated.
Thank you Budapest
Kelly and Ashley
U2 is out touring Europe in June, July and August 2009, but unfortunately Budapest is not on the list of cities U2 will appear in. In fact there are several big concert cities that will not be visited, but today I read that TicketPro will help hungarian fans to get tickets to the U2 concerts in Zagreb (Croatia) and in Chorzow (Poland).
The tickets on salfe from TicketPro can be bought from here. For those of us who would rather stay in Budapest, it is better to take a look at our list of concerts taking place in Budapest in 2009, which can be found here.
Since Budapest is a city full of life and opportunities, we have to stay awake and keep our services up-to-date. Knowing that tourists coming to Budapest not only look for only guided tours, but also other kind of tours, we have expanded our guided tour list with some new possibilities and options. One of them is the well-known pub crawl. According to Wikipedia a pub crawl is “the act of one or more people drinking in multiple pubs or bars in a single night, normally walking to each one between drinking.” So that is our goal when tourists come to join us on one of these trips.
We also added to our register wine tasting in Budapest and helicopter tours above Budapest. Our wine tasting is not directed towards the professional winetaster, but rather directed towards those who simply love wine, enjoy wine and would like to taste Hungarian wines. The helicopter sightseeing is an affordable event, but it will for sure give memories to tell colleagues, friends and family about when you go home.
These are all brand new services, and we are curious to receive feedback on these as our guests start trying them out. Maybe you would like to be among the first people to try one of these offers?
Kaiser Chiefs is coming to Budapest in 2009 and they will perform in Papp Laszlo Budapest Sportarena June 19, 20:00.
Kaiser Chiefs Budapest
Papp Laszlo Budapest Sportarena
June 19-2009, 20:00
Tickets: Eventim
About Kaiser Chiefs (source: Wikipedia)
Kaiser Chiefs are an English indie rock band who formed in 1997. Hailing from Leeds, the group consists of vocalist Ricky Wilson, guitarist Andrew ‘Whitey’ White, bassist Simon Rix, keyboardist Nick ‘Peanut’ Baines, and drummer Nick Hodgson. They were named after the South African football club Kaizer Chiefs, a team which former Leeds United defender Lucas Radebe played for.
The group’s debut album, Employment, was released in 2005. It was primarily inspired by new wave and punk rock music of late 1970s, and enjoyed international success with sales of over three million. In 2005, the album was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. Kaiser Chiefs’ second album, Yours Truly, Angry Mob (2007), yielded “Ruby”, a number one single in the United Kingdom.
This is the day many AC/DC fans have been waiting for since long ago. We ourselves have helped people with tips and advices concerning tickets to the concert, and the tickets for the AC/DC concert were sold out within one week or so. Today is the day, so for the lucky ones with ticket Papp Laszlo Budapest Sportarena is the place to be this evening!
Tomorrow another hot-shot will perform in Budapest, Pink! She will also perform in the Papp Laszlo Budapest Sportarena! For an overview over concerts in Budapest, check out our Budapest concert and event list.
For those coming to Budapest today for any of these concert be aware of the strong wind in the city, which is really cold, so even though the temperature might show 6-7-8-9-10 degrees, it feels really cold as you step outside your warm car!
