After 17 years and 14 albums, Delirious? will be playing its Central European farewell show in Budapest, Hungary. They are touring “Kingdom of Comfort”, their last studio album that revolves around the heavy theme of social justice. Tickets can be bought from eventim and BudapestGospel.
Event info
Date: 19 December 2008, Friday 7.30PM
Venue: Petőfi Csarnok Main Hall
Zichy Mihály u. 14., 1146 Budapest, Hungary
More concerts and events in Budapest
The annual Opera Ball will take place on the 21 February in 2009. The star guest will be Richard Clayderman, so if you like him you have one more excuse to come visit the Hungarian State Opera.
The event is not a cheap thing; tickets start from 84.000 forints. For ticket booking, programme and more information go to operabal.com.
Richard ClaydermanShort History of the Budapest Opera Ball: (source: operabal.com)
A social event has been reborn where the leading persons of the middle class that is to say the Hungarian culture, knowledge, power and money meet one another each year. The opera ball had been first organised in 1886 and, after an interval of 62 years, it has revived in 1996. Representing the 111 years’ tradition, it has become the largest and most important meeting of the participants of the Hungarian public life winning the keenest attention of the public opinion already the first time.
Gerbeaud by night, Originally uploaded by GuideToBudapest
At this square there will in not to many weeks be a christmas market. The Vörösmarty Square, the main square of Budapest, is the place where the traditional Christmas Market will be held this year for the tenth time.
At the picture you can see the Gerbeaud building, and totally in front a nice coffee place where you can get some hot drinks and cold drinks.
Just as a little nice thing; today it has been measured almost 20 Celsius in Budapest. Quite nice, ey? This Thursday we had a guided tour with some Norwegians, and during the tour one received a phonecall, because they needed him to remove the snow from some norwegian roads… I just though; man it is good, at least from the perspective of climate, to live in Hungary.
Depeche Mode will hold a concert in Budapest 23 June 2009 at the Puskas Ferenc Stadium. Tickets are available at WorldTicketShop.
About Depece Mode
Depeche Mode are an English electronic music band formed in 1980, in Basildon, Essex. The group’s original line-up was Dave Gahan (lead vocals), Martin Gore (keyboards, guitar, vocals, chief songwriter after 1981), Andrew Fletcher (keyboards) and Vince Clarke (keyboards, chief songwriter 1980–81). Vince Clarke left the band after the release of their 1981 debut album, and was replaced by Alan Wilder (lead keyboards) who was a band member from 1982 to 1995. Following Wilder’s departure, Gahan, Gore, and Fletcher have continued as a trio. Depeche Mode are one of the longest-lived, most successful and influential bands to have emerged from the New Romantic and New Wave era. They have had forty-five songs in the UK Singles Chart, as well as one US and two UK number one albums. According to EMI, Depeche Mode have sold over 75 million albums worldwide, as part of total worldwide record sales in excess of 100 million.
Source: Wikipedia
Budapest has a lot of festivals, and every year they arrange a spring festival. In 2009 the spring festival will be arranged between 20 March and 5 April. Among the artists you can find:
Ágnes Szakály, Amadinda Percussion Group, Anderszewski Piotr, Arkadi Volodos, Bartók Quartet, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Budapest Tomkins Vocal Ensemble, Camerata Salzburg,
Ensemble Martinù, Harding Daniel, János Dobra, Kálmán Záborszky, Kodály Quartet, Kremerata Baltica, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Maisenberg Oleg, Mika Teranagane, Milan Turkovic,
Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Say Fazil, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis and Zugló Philharmonia.
For a full list of the programs and venues, go to www.btf.hu/btf2009/
If you are looking for an apartment or would like a guided tour as you come to Budapest for the festival, feel free to contact us for advices and help!
CHRISTMAS MARKET BUDAPEST 2009 INFORMATION HERE
In forums all around the world and in travel magazines people now speak of the christmas markets around the world, and around in Europe. I just visited a page where they wrote about the ten best christmas fairs in Europe, and Budapest was not included. Included or not, Budapest has a great christmas market at the Vörösmarty Square (endstation of the yellow underground line), and here you can buy presents, food and have a really good time!
This year it is the tenth anniversary for the christmas market, and more than 150 programs accompany the christmas market. Around 600 000 visitors are expected to visit the market between 21 November and 29 December.
Earlier this week we had the chance to visit Mátyás Pince to taste their food, and to listen to some gipsy music while we were eating. Our goal and what we wanted to discover, was whether this was a restaurant to recommend to tourists or not. And after eating there we have for sure found out.
Our starter was a Hungarian Goulash soup, and we must say; it for sure tasted like Goulash soup… Some people told us that they serve the Goulash soup with beans several places (and they normally do not like that), but here they did not, and we were able to really enjoy the soup.
After the soup we ordered two different main courses; Breast of Pullet Grilled with Fresh Spices of Garden, with Mixed Salad in Roquefort Dressing and Paprika Chicken Stew Szeged Style with Home Made Butter Dumplings. The first is not really Hungarian, but my wife wanted that, so no need to argue! I ate the Paprica Chicken and I was really satisfied with the taste of it.
In places like this they often have annoying gipsy music playing in the background, and sometimes the musicians put their violins almost into your ears, but we had no problem with the musicians or the volume here.
As a dessert we ate “rétes” with ice-cream; a nice ending of a “hungarian” evening!
Conclusion
We really got a taste of Hungary, and if you are looking for a place to eat Hungarian food this might be one that will meet your needs. The prices are high compared with many other places, so it will probably not be a place where we will come back all the time; but for the sake of tasting Hungary it was satisfying our needs!
Pink will have a concert in Budapest 24 March 2009. The concert will be held in the Papp Laszlo Budapest Sportarena, and tickets can be ordered from Eventim.
Press Release
Brit and Grammy Award winning, multi-platinum singer P!nk today announced plans for a new tour in 2009. The tour will kick off in Belgium on 26th February finishing in the UK in early May. Just last week P!nk scored her second UK No.1 with her new single ‘So What’, taken from ‘Funhouse’, the new album. The single remains at No.1 this week as well as being No. 1 in Germany, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and the USA.
Pink had a message for her fans “I’m so excited to get back on the road. The ‘Funhouse’ tour ideas are running rampant in my head. Who knows what they’ll come out as…. And I can’t wait to see”. P!nk’s previous tour sold out arenas across the UK and Europe and established her as a major headline artist. The ‘I’m Not Dead Tour’ included 56 arena shows and a further 43 Festival dates!
The announcement of these dates coincides with the release of Pink’s fifth album ‘Funhouse’ released on October 27th, the follow-up to 2006’s ‘I’m Not Dead’, which went four times platinum in the UK, selling 1.2 million copies. Since her debut in 2000, P!nk has been widely hailed as a fearlessly talented singer/songwriter, and the Pennsylvania native’s genre-defying creative risk-taking has propelled her to global stardom. To date, P!nk has sold 22 million albums cumulatively worldwide.
Last week we wrote about how the financial crisis is impacting the forint. The bottom point was when 1 Euro was equal to 285-286 forints. This week the forint has again been gaining strength, and this morning at 9:30 (you can see the clock) my Windows Vista desktop told me that 1 Euro is equal to 255,5 forints. For the Hungarians these are good news, and hopefully the forint will grow further in strength. For tourists it is not that good, as you need to use more money to buy the products in Hungary!
To read more about the currency, changing of money in Budapest and so on, check out our updated currency page.
LáncHíd, Originally uploaded by marcustg
The Hungarian National Bank arranged a competition not long ago where people could vote for what symbol they would like to see on the new 200 Forint coin. They received more than 200 000 votes, and more than half of them voted for the Chain Bridge in Budapest.
The new coin will earliest be used in the first quarter of 2009, while it is expected that people can use the 200 Forint paperversion (that we use now) until the end of 2009.
It is not the picture above that will be on the coin, but we can wait and see how it looks when it becomes available in 2009. If you want to read more about the oldest bridge in Budapest, we recommend you to click on the link above. There you can read more about the bridges history and events since it was first used in 1849.
