blog | thehub.hu | guide to budapest

Thehub doesn't usually get invited to parties. The last time we did, we were told in no uncertain terms that this one would be our very last and we were 'an absolute disgrace' - words that were shouted loudly by a scary man who kept clipping us around the ears.

All that hurt a lot but it didn't stop us from nicking a load of random objects on the way out - including a copy of Woman's Own, a set of candlesticks, a miserable-looking cat who howled so much we had to leave it in the street somewhere, and a high-heeled shoe. It still gets worn from time to time, that.

Attendees will be handed name tags upon entrance with empty fields to write their name, as well as they blog they most identify with. During the evening, giveaways will be awarded to both a random raffle pick from all attendees, as well as to the blog garnering the most worn name tags. Each blog will also have their own space for placement of promo material'.

Kunk presents: 2ManyBloggas2
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Trafo Bar Tango
Address: IX. Lilliom u. 41
Entrance: 800 HUF
DJs: Kunk, Kollektiva, WPAHP, Gumipop, Tonyo vs. Adi (The Moog)

PARTICIPATING LINKS: http://www.bpfashion.hu, http://bpstyle.blogspot.com, http://www.ektiv.hu, http://www.gumipop.hu, http://www.hellorepublic.com, http://www.thehub.hu, http://juicy.mashkulture.net, http://kultplay.hu, http://www.mykunk.com, http://mindennapibetevo.freeblog.hu, http://ourstyle.freeblog.hu, http://www.pepmagazin.hu

ZOOOOOOOOM! ZOOOOOOOOOOOM! ZOOOM! ZOOOOOM!

Our first words in 83 days, and I thought nothing would be more appropriate, because we’re just about to zoooom back onto the radar. (We’ve been in England by the way, in London for a few months). However, that’s not the only reason I wrote

'ZOOOOOOOOM! ZOOOOOOOOOOOM! ZOOOM! ZOOOOOM!'

Ever since I got back, I’ve woken up each morning to the sounds of aeroplanes zooooming over the house. What on earth is going on? Are we at war? Did Slovakia invade?

Well... not quite. It’s the Red Bull Air Race, which involves several days of practice, practice, practice, qualifying, race. From the pictures on the Red Bull website, of upside-down, twirling planes in front of the Parliament building, you’d think this is going to be quite a spectacle. That, coupled with the involvement of Péter Besenyei, one of Hungary’s best, and best-known sportsmen was certainly enough to pique my interest.

He seems like quite a character, this Besenyei. I came across a Guardian interview with him the other day, in which he made the quite magnificent claim that no-one has ever thrown up in one of his flying machines. (Erm... have me on board, Péter, and I’ll be sick all over you).

Here are the rules for the Red Bull Air Race, in case you were wondering what it’s all about.

"During the first day, pilots run two training rounds then two qualification rounds. The times of the last training session determine flight order for both qualifying rounds, slowest racing first. The best time from either qualifying run counts. Twelve pilots with the fastest times continue on to race the second day. The lowest four who made it through qualifying race for ninth place and one World Series point in the aptly named "Point One" round. The top eight, or "Super Eights" are seeded based on qualification times then race head-to-head. Winners from the Super Eight round race again in the semifinals while losers are ranked 5th through 8th based on their time. From the semifinals, the pilots either head to the final to determine the winner and runner-up, or to the consolation final to settle third and fourth places".

No, I didn't read them either. Anyway, the idea of an air race still got me all hot and excited, so I headed down there yesterday afternoon, images of spiralling, nose-diving aircraft filling my head. The first thing I saw was a helicopter turning upside down, righting itself, turning upside down, righting itself, turning upside down, righting itself, turning upside down, righting itself. Very far away - part of the air show. As I wasn't actually in a helicopter of my own and hadn't had a drop of red bull, the whole experience left me feeling slightly restive. I blinked up into the sky and waited for it to stop. It did, and qualifying started. This involved some brightly coloured aeroplanes zooming down towards the Danube, traversing a few pylons, then flying away, all to the strains of Prodigy's Firestarter. And... that's it! Again and again. Later, I wandered down the bank of the river and found a few stages pumping out bad 50's rock to a handful of onlookers, and a bunch of stalls selling food that nobody was eating because the weather was too hot.

Now, I don't mind races, and red bull serves a purpose, but part of me wonders if it's so necessary for this event to bring the noise in such a spectacular fashion, for such a sustained length of time. Even on Monday, when I went to the river to watch the sun sink behind the hills, I was confronted with some kind of metal fence, beyond which stood a pair of speakers pumping out mundane pop. Aren't people living/working nearby?

As I write this, it's three o'clock on St. Stephen's Day and I'm in Gozsdu courtyard - all I can hear is the sound of aircraft zooooming overhead. To hell with it. Maybe I'll go down to the river and give Péter some love. It's not like I can take a siesta.


Andy T.

To my left, a couple of kidneys and a brain, on a plate. To my right, three men stand at a table, hacking up half a pig. In front of them lies a mysterious bucket of gore, a loose eyeball perched on top. I’m standing, staring right back at it, when my Hungarian friend leans over and recommends some brain. Try it. It’s goood, he says. Very good with eggs! If you like, we can ask Mother to fry it up for breakfast tomorrow…

We’re standing in a darkened garage in the heart of the Hungarian countryside. Dropped cold into this house of horror, a scene like this would look jaw-droppingly wrong. However, five hours (and several pálinkas) after it all began, it’s very acceptable. In fact, the pig has started to look less like an ex-farmyard animal and more like an extravagant jigsaw - tricky, three-dimensional and ultra-realistic. Putting all of this back together would take hours, I think, swaying slightly.

Can it really be only 10.45 am? I gulp down some wine, look at my watch, then step over a box of pig’s head (ears, snout, face etc.), and around a bucket of fresh, chopped up skin. Five minutes earlier, our friend Támas had picked up a piece of this, tossed salt onto it, and popped it into his mouth. ’Try it. It’s goood’ he’d said, holding one out to me. Woof! Politely, I’d declined.






Even though I’d hardly moved, arriving at this point felt like a journey, especially for someone as squeamish as myself. Watching Cannibal Ferox is fine in the comfort of your bedroom, but having scenes acted out in front of you is altogether different. In the garage, a head had been taken apart, in the back garden a spine removed with Father's bare hands. Upstairs, in the relative comfort of the kitchen, mother and daughter stirred a bucket of blood, preparing a breakfast of fresh liver and black pudding. And everywhere, the house was greasy. Smudges were left on the kitchen window, the door handles smeared with fat.

We’d met the pig the previous evening and watched it jostle for space in its pen, with three others. It was bulky and certainly no Babe - in fact, he looked about as graceful as a bus, manoeuvring its way around Tesco car park. Perhaps it was this that put me off. At six fifteen, when I emerged blinking into the sunlight, the pig was lying on its side, blood trickling out of its throat. I went over to the corner of the garden, looked at the tractor for a while, then drank a pálinka. After that, we bathed the pig, set fire to it, and strung him up.



It’s an odd time to have a pig killing, mid-May, and it only really happens if you’ve got extra pigs. Even though it was far too hot to smoke any meat, not much went to waste. A good deal of it disappeared into the refrigerator and we ate what we could - sausage, liver sausage, blood liver sausage, deep fried pork. Fat was cooked and put aside for later, snout and ears put into pig cheese, brain saved for some kind of mad breakfast.

Ultimately, I’d half expected to come back from this pig killing a hollow man, like John Rambo, or failing that, a vegetarian, like John Rambo (only joking, he definitely eats meat). Neither happened - I still like meat, and I’m still fine with the fact that to eat it, you have to kill an animal. In reality, I actually returned from Bakony feeling more like a hermaphrodite.

Let me explain. Tasks at a Hungarian pig killing are divided up pretty squarely, and while I wasn’t man enough to kill the animal, I wasn’t quite enough of a woman to be allowed into the kitchen to stir blood, and chop onions. Instead, I floated around with a camera and a microphone, slack-jawed, giggling.

However, if there’s one thing I did learn from this weekend, it’s that organs really do look like organs. A heart looks like a heart, liver like liver, intestines like intestines and that there’s an undeniable similarity between the insides of pigs and humans. Give me a human liver, and I might know what to do, eventually. A bowl of human blood, maybe I could cook it. You see, it isn't that I want to kill a man, but right now, it really doesn't feel like that much of a stretch. With time, maybe, possibly, perhaps… I could learn.

Dawn. The countryside. An adorable pig blinks away sleep, wondering why on earth he’s been woken up so early, and what so many people are doing near his pen. Goodness gracious, thinks the animal. Perhaps I’ve been doing something right after all. They’re here to play with me! It’s my lucky day!

In the kitchen, a clock strikes six and a last shot of pálinka is downed. From across the garden, a burly, moustachioed man strides towards the enclosure.

Hello, thinks the pig. That’s the chap who feeds me every day. It’s about time they gave me a bit of tucker! Chocolate drops, hopefully.

Although the animal has no idea, this macabre routine is well-rehearsed. The crowd looms over him... his legs are grabbed roughly, and the pig starts to get cross. Now, come on, he thinks. There's no need for all this. Let's play nicely for a bit, then we all can eat the chocolate drops together. Oi! Ow!

‘…kill the pig, cut his throat, bash him in, kill the pig! cut his throat! bash him in! KILL THE PIG…!’ As the chanting reaches a peak, the knife plunges down, slicing him from ear to ear. A river of blood fills the garden.

BANG BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BANG (zip) (zip) (fizz) SMAK BOOM BOOM (zip) (fizz) (zip). BANG BANG.

With all these bullets flying back and forth, it’s difficult to have any thoughts whatsoever on John Rambo, when watching John Rambo. The story is simple, which is good, because it’s (zip) hard to concentrate (BOOM), or even hear yourself ZIP above the think (noise) BOOM.

In all honesty, I’m not writing this in the cinema, but you get the idea. To prove that I understood the plot, here it is in 38 words.
__________________________________________________________________

Rambo lives near Burma, it’s dangerous. Burmese BAD. Missionaries come. Want to enter Burma. Rambo says no. Then he takes them. Missionaries get captured. Rambo has to kill everyone BAD, sometimes spectacularly. Rambo saves Missionaries! But not Burma.

__________________________________________________________________

It was last Sunday night, and I’d walked over to Palace Westend in light rain. I don't have an excuse, I couldn’t have ended up in that cinema by mistake. While John Rambo was never likely to be any good, there was something appealingly adolescent, and plain awful about it. At times, I questioned what I was doing, whether this should actually be a turning point in my life. Perhaps I was close to an epiphany. 28 years old, 11:00, Sunday night, in a shopping centre, with a beer. Maybe I would come out of the zip cinema realising it was (zip) about time I SMAK (zip) (whiz) BANG BOOM BOOM BOOM.

Killing is as easy as breathing

According to Wikipedia, John Rambo is one of the most violent movies ever produced, with 236 killings, an average of 2.59 every minute. By my reckoning, there were 234, but it still seems like a staggering figure. However, once you’ve done a few sums, it actually isn’t that many.

For instance, there are just 778.8 seconds of solid killings in John Rambo. This adds up to 12.8 minutes of screen time, or 14% of the movie. As a result, 80.02 minutes of this 93-minute film passed by with no killings at all.

14%. Assuming that's what you pay your money for, it's enough to make you ask for it back. Until you look at it like this.

- A discount cinema ticket at Palace Westend costs 1000 ft.
- 1000 ft divided by 236 per killing, or 234, gives you 4.
- Effectively, each screen killing costs 4ft. (3 ft on cheap days).

Pretty competitive, that. And once you start comparing it to other films (for argument’s sake, let’s say Seven and Bambi), John Rambo looks like the pound shop of Hollywood blockbusters. By today’s standards, it'd be 142 forint per screen death in Seven. Pricey yes, but compared to Bambi, it’s a bargain. As far as I can remember, there’s just one killing in that movie. 1 divided by 1000ft… equals 1000ft.

Come on, Walt! For goodness sake, that’s a little dear.

Should this even exist?

I learnt something that night. Unfortunately, it wasn’t about myself, or killing, but rather the Burmese military. They’re mean! Not only do they blow things up, they murder people, hit people, beat people, slap people, rape women and children, then shoot them. In a very exciting way.

All of this pornographic violence, presented in slow motion and with surround sound, struck me as somewhat questionable. In fact, in a boneheaded action film such as this, a dire situation becomes ridiculous - Burma looks artificial, like the town in Blazing Saddles.

For me, the film was far more revealing about Sylvester Stallone. It’s his Apocalypto, a glimpse into the mind of a slightly mad man. He wrote the screenplay, produced it, directed it, starred in it, and ultimately saves the day with a massive machine gun. I honestly felt as if this was Sly's 6th birthday party… and I'd been invited to sit around and watch.




Andy T.

Ah, Budapest! There are few cityscapes that come close. From the Fishermen’s Bastion, I cast my eye down the riverbank at the rich architectural tapestry: the splendid parliament building, the curvaceous Gresham Palace, the slender Chain Bridge… then, all of a sudden: blam, blam, blam! My vision is shot to pieces by three hotels.

Three monstrosities: huge luxury chains, I might add. Now, the Sofitel architect was somewhat worse than mediocre but at least it’s set back a little from the river. The Intercontinental, clad in brown plastic, swears blind that it’s not as bad as it might have been. And then there’s the Marriott.

“Enjoy The View” runs the slogan. I’m just searching the small print for “but don’t take the blindfold off until you’re inside.” The cheek of it! A few moneyed customers enjoy the view, while the rest of us enjoy an enormous grey slab of concrete. There are better-looking multi-storey car parks, and they don’t usually park them so badly. The glossy pamphlet rather glosses over this by bravely showing the exterior by night.

Only one other hotel in Budapest can compete for the title of City’s Greatest Eyesore, and that’s the Hilton. Positioned precisely 1 millimetre away from the Fishermen’s Bastion, it’s the choice of the truly discerning culture trampler. As invasively located hotels go, it could look worse: its tinted, mirrored windows do at least deflect attention away from it, and the roof design tries to capture something vaguely historical.

Of course, if you’re actually interested in history, you might be slightly aggrieved to find it buried under the hotel or at least consumed by it. 13th-century Dominican church ruins merge seamlessly with 1970s hotel design, so much so that they’re easy to miss.

So it's difficult to see whose crime is the greatest in this whole sorry affair: the former Communist State; the multinationals that own the hotels; or the tourists that stay there. Whichever way, I look forward to the "futuristic-looking yellow building" that will soon grace Clark Ádám tér. That, my friends, is progress.

Andy Sz.

Keleti's Arena Plaza opened in a blaze of glory around Christmas, Vörösmarty tér has unveiled its new H and M, but there's one poor little shopping centre that almost everyone has forgotten about. 'Poky' MOM Park never had an awful lot going for it, but there's much less now, given that half the shops seem to have closed down.

I was there a few weeks back, and noticed that even though the management had started to put cars inside the shopping centre, it hardly makes a difference. Customers still shuffle sleepily around, not wanting to move too quickly because then their trip will be finished and they'll have to go home.

Sadly, it's all very like Dawn of the Dead, George A Romero's semi-coherent attack on consumerism. This Zombie Great tells the story of a group of people in a shopping mall trying to withstand a zombie attack. At the beginning of the film, as two of the protagonists look down at the undead congregating outside the mall, there is the following exchange...

Francine: 'What are they doing?! Why do they come here?'

Stephen: 'I don't know. Some kind of instinct. Memory, of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.'

Ha! This conversation could easily have taken place in MOM park, standing on the balcony, watching people milling aimlessly from shop to shop. And, while all this has the potential to be quite frightening, at least nobody in MOM Park is eating anyone else's entrails.

Dawn of the Dead

MOM Park

Andy T

Now then. The man on the right, as you may or may not know, is Mr Deak Ferenc. Take a quick look, then answer the following question... does he strike you as

a) sly?
b) moustachioed?
c) fashionable?

The correct answer of course, is c. If you answered a or b, then you've made a silly mistake. Have another look. It might be 132 years since Deak Ferenc died, but clearly, he's still a sartorial trailblazer... that vest/bib... those slanty buttons... the nondescript haircut...this season, they're so in! In fact, confronted with a picture of our dapper friend, the rebranding of Deak Ferenc utca as FASHION STREET suddenly makes perfect sense. (Quite why we aren't currently changing trains at FASHION STATION, soaking up rays in FASHION SQUARE, and struggling to change FASHION FORINT NOTES is a mystery).

Okay, enough of that. In all seriousness, I have no idea why FASHION STREET is still around. When the monstrous sign was first hauled over the side of an innocent building in late 2007, I grimaced and hoped that this was just end of year madness, that everything would return to normal once the twelve days of Christmas had passed. But it was still there yesterday and it'll probably be there tomorrow. An unfortunate, permanent (?) eyesore.

This afternoon, I wandered over to FASHION STREET, hoping to find out if there was any chance of all this nonsense coming to an end. The first thing I saw was a skip, a stone's throw away from a brightly coloured pair of mobiltoaletts, something you'd hardly expect to find on the Ginza. I strolled on a little further, and gradually realised that most of the customers on FASHION STREET were tough-looking men, pushing FASHIONABLE wheelbarrows, wearing FASHIONABLE workclothes. Cutting edge, I thought... is this what to expect from Paris and Milan 2008?

No, of course not. FASHION STREET is under construction. It was started on 6/11/07, to be finished on 15/3/08, and apparently a man called Tibor Kamondy is to blame. I stumbled across this information on a sign, shortly before I went into a shop charging 34,300 ft for a jumper, 20,400 ft for a t-shirt (on sale) and 104, 990 ft for a bag (not on sale).

It's hard to put a finger on what's so irksome about FASHION STREET. Maybe the fact that many Hungarians struggle to pay their heating bills, never mind 10,000 ft for an umbrella. Perhaps it's the transformation of an unassuming corner into a characterless, slightly pathetic imitation of streets in other cities (FASHION STREET would hardly look out of place in say, Peterborough). Or maybe it's not that at all... it could just be the fact that FASHION STREET really doesn't need a signpost.



Andy T.

Bad customer service is famously common in Hungary... there really isn't an awful lot you can do. You hardly want to start an argument with a ticket collector, or a shopkeeper, or a barmaid, just because they look like they've spent the entire day sucking on a lemon.

Anyway, at thehub, we're a bit sick of it, so we've decided to start sticking up for ourselves! In a small-minded, cowardly way! We're going to put a handful of these situations on the site, an intermittent naming and shaming (... having said that, we probably won't get their names, and furthermore, as they're hardly likely to read this, they probably won't feel ashamed). We also want photos of the culprits, if we can possibly get away with taking one. This time, I couldn't.

Now that I no longer have a television, my main link to the world of advertising is the metro. I think this has heightened my awareness of just how awful it can be, even though I can barely understand a word.

Bleary-eyed, I wait on the platform having just missed my train but I do at least have the comfort of a beaming five year-old, holding up a 10,000 Forint note like the Holy Grail. Magyar Nemzeti Bank, it seems, are rather keen to turn your kids into raving capitalists. But he doesn't know what money is! He's five! He probably thinks that's enough money to buy a spaceship! On the other hand, he looks rather at home standing in front of that safe; I wonder if he lives there, raised by Forints.

Perhaps the greatest recent advert offender is Pannon, who seem to have overlooked the potential of the slogan "If anyone pan, Pannon pan" or, indeed, "Hmmmm... Pannon". Instead, they've commissioned the wettest guy in history since man's ancestors crawled out of the sea, to grin along with his wife and the child he's unlikely to have fathered, at the bliss that a Pannon internet connection brings. Still, better that than the previous campaign, as he burst out of a molehill with a dirty telephone, grinning his obligatory grin at the improbable fortune that he'd completed his task without getting a single spot of mud on his shirt.

Family advertising seems to be the trend and pharmaceutical company, Ratiopharm, piles mother, father, son, daughter and grandparents onto one sofa and astonishes them with something out of view. Now, I've examined the looks on their faces and carried out a statistical analysis of their respective emotions, concluding that there's only one thing that they could possibly be staring at.


The BKV itself is trying to develop a more personal image too. They've come up with a lovely poster, just in time for Valentine's day: two ticket validating machines - the ones that never work, even if you've figured out that they're not electronic - are arranged to form a heart, and hence the statement "I heart BKV". To me this seems a little unrealistic. The addition of graffiti improved it a little: "I fuck BKV", which is true, if you're a habitual fare-dodger. But really it should have read, and you'll know this if you've splashed out on a monthly pass recently, "BKV fucks you!"

Andy Sz.

Pancake Day (or Shrove Tuesday) is here again. The first pancake’s always rubbish isn’t it – you might as well give it to the dog, except Basil’s still at home in Kent. There’s no need to miss out on the pancake action whilst you’re here in Budapest – the palacsinta is a staple on any self-respecting Hungarian menu, after all. I like pancakes a lot, so it would seem like I'm in the right place. Here are some tales of my latest conquests.

Belvárosi Lugas Étterem
Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út 15 [map]
Pest Centre, VI, Bajcsy-Zsilinszky (M1) or Deák F. tér (M3), 2 mins

First stop: sour cherry-filled pancakes with almond sauce at the Belvárosi Lugas Étterem opposite St. Stephen’s Basilica. Big portion, loads of sour cherries, lovely and plump and shiny. The almond sauce however, was also generously slopped all over the pancakes, and since it was an unearthly pale green colour, the dish didn’t look very appetizing. Are almonds green? Maybe there was an accident with the food colouring in the kitchen. It made me anxious to wipe my mouth well after each forkful, to avoid walking out into Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út with green slime on my chin, looking like an extra from a zombie flick. I couldn’t finish it, but I left the restaurant with an enjoyable warm, if slightly gloopy feeling.

Alföldi Vendéglő
Kecskeméti utca 4 [map]
Pest Centre, V, Kálvin tér (M3), 1 min

Not a nation to miss a meat-eating opportunity, the Hungarians also stuff their pancakes with beef in a tasty dish from the eastern plains. Hortobágyi palacsinta are served covered in a pleasing swamp of soured cream and paprika sauce. I’d like to imagine the cowboys on the plains of the Hortobágy eating these, but they seem far too structurally unsound to eat on horseback. And if your horse decided to sit down on its hind legs before you’d finished it, then you’d really be in trouble.

The Alföldi Vendéglő offer it as a hearty starter (or heart-stopper?), which my friend ordered. She definitely made the right choice, I thought as I looked at my enormous beef-stuffed cabbage surrounded by a ‘garnish’ of fatty chunks of pork, drenched in a rich and salty tomato sauce. I looked across the coronary-red and salt-white tablecloth and envied her choice of meal. Beware the generous portions, but do visit for a genuine taste of Hungarian country cooking.

Berliner Pub
Ráday utca, 5. [map]
Pest South, IX, Kálvin tér (M3), 4 min

On trendy Ráday utca, I shared a truly delicious pancake with a friend in the cellar of the Berliner Pub. We ended an excellent meal with a plate of Gundel palacsinta and two spoons. I’m not sure if it was the rum-soaked filling or the incredibly rich dark chocolate sauce, but these indulgent pancakes made me swoon. For half the price of the same dish at Gundel’s Étterem, these are much better value-for-money and there’s no need to comb your hair and shine your shoes before you go in.
cakes, cherry, eating, food, gundel, gundle, hungary, pan, pancake, pancakes
Lucy F.