This is the blog of Budapestagent.com, a combination of news around Budapest and private things happening to me here in Budapest, the capital of Hungary.
Who is the Budapestagent?
I am a 29 year old German who lives since more than 4 years in Budapest. Since than I review all places I have been to. It has been a lot and it will be more. more...
It looks like that the first Google Street View cars are making their rounds in Budapest. I heart about London and Berlin but didn’t know that they are in Budapest already. For all of you who are interested in it here are some pictures about the Google Streetview Cars in Budapest.
The result will be tht you can check online basically any street in Budapest as recorded by the Google Street view cars and look at buildings or even traffic and people. Of course the data protection activists will have their say about it. Maybe will will have a look like this in Budapest as well. Stay tuned for more about Google Street View Budapest.
I haven’t been to the AC/DC concert yesterday in Budapest Sportarena but I heart from several people that it waas a blast. Well the only proof I could find so far is on Youtube, so check out this video of the concert yesterday.
That was a big news over the weekend. Ferenc Gyurcsany, primeminister of Hungary, offered his resignation. He will leave his place to somebody new if his party, MSZP, finds another candidate for the Primeminster position. Problem is that the opposition votes against any social spendings which makes the work harder than it should be. Fidesz now has the MSZP where they want them to be. Gyurcsány offered to step back from his position if that is necessary to lead the country out of the current crisis.
Till April 14th Gyurcsány will remain as Primeminister, till than a new candidate should be found to avoid completely new elections which the main opposition party Fidesz is calling for. Nevertheless Gyurcsány was reelected as the partys president with 85% of the votes.
With that news the Forint started to be weaker again and jumped up above the 300 mark. At the moment around 302 Forint per Euro which is most likely to go up the next days. So if you are planning to change some Euros into Forint I would wait 2 or 3 days.
As I am not the political monster and just sum up what I read in other sources I recommend to you to read the following stories about Gyurcsány and his resignation:
Today morning at around 7.30, I was already awake but still in bed, it rang on the front door so I had to get up and check who is it and what he wants. Well friday morning it is time to collect the litter bin which we put outside the property on thursday night already. As we moved in that house not long ago there was still some other gargabe on the property like parquet, old, ugly lamps, boxes and all kind of shit which doesn’t really fit in the normal garbage… usually.
Well today the garbage collector rang the bell and asked me if we need to get rid of that stuff. I answered “yes, sure”. From now on he called me “főnök úr” as he saw his business coming. So he asked me if I would pay 1000 HUF to take all the remaining garbage as well in this round. So I gave him the 1000 HUF and let them take it. Usually I would have put it step by step every thursday night in the litter bin until it is gone but come on for 4 Euro he took all the stuff. He and his 2 colleagues can have a nice beer in the pub tonight and I don’t have to care about the garbage anymore. Fine with me.
Thats how Budapest and Hungary is working. A bit of money and he just took the garbage. It is a one time thing, he is happy I am happy that’s it. You find these businesses everywhere, no matter if in the taxi, with the water installation guy or in the hair dresser. That is the daily life of Budapest.
No March 15th national holiday in Budapest without riots. Of course yesterday (luckily I haven’t been in Budapest) there were some demonstrations by the far right again as nearly every year. Since 2006 I am writing about it but since these are no big news anymore I will just post old links where you will find videos, pictures and articles by famous news sources such as the New York Times, CNN or the BBC.
First of all excuse the partly Hungarian title of this post but it couldn’t fit better. “Rossz” is Hungarian and means bad, “rosszabb” is worse but the superaltive is not Rossmann of course, it would be “a legrosszabb”. It is not time for Hungarian lessons today so lets get to the point. Rossmann is a quite large German drug store company with several stores in Hungary as well.
Now why is Rossmann the superlative of bad? Well yesterday a friend of mine went to a Rossmann store to buy 3 articles. Now standing at the cash point the lady scanned all 3 of these articles and let my friend pay the bill but did not give a receipt. Well in 99,9% of the cases you don’t give a shit because you don’t need it anyways bit in this case she would have needed it. So when going to the exit the nice security alarm started to ring and the security guy (in nearly every store in Budapest you find a security guy) asked her to open the bag. She did, showed the three paid items but couldn’t show the receipt since she didn’t get it. They couldn’t even find it in the litter bin or anywhere.
My friend said that they should check the video camera to proof that everything was paid. The answer was a simple “we don’t have a monitor for it”. Second try was to check the system what was on the last bill. Next answer was “We can only do this after 24 hours”. Wow.
So result was that they called the police because of a shampoo which wasn’t paid. By the way it was the cheapest Shampoo and the wallet was full of money. The police had to write a report and asked my friend to sign it in which it basically said that she is a thief. If she would have signed it she would be. So she asked the policemen to let her write her story on this report which they allowed her to do after a long discussion (unbelievable that they want you to sign this report even though you have the right not to do so and exlain the story from your point of view).
End of the story is that Rossmann checked the system yesterday and found out that my friend paid all items which she took. Today the head of Rossmann called her to apologize. She will of course get the Shampoo (she paid it but didn’t get it) and some compensation which most probably will be a rubbish 5000 HUF shopping coupon or something like that.
Well, for having so unfriendly and incompetent employees and security guards I recommend to you to either go to Schlecker, DM or buy your stuff in one of the big stores like Tesco, Auchan or Cora.
Today morning I had a little time and thought about creating a page on Facebook for Budapestagent.com. Well the Result you can find here. Of course still I am learning about the creation of pages, all the applications that can be added and so on. Its not as easy as I thought cause it is mixing up with my normal Facebook Account and all of a sudden I have Twitter Tweets, Rss Feeds and so on on my normal Facebook profile even though I want them to be on the Facebook page.
Well anyways I think it is a nice way to see if and how popular Budapestagent.com is and if the information is really helpful. In my mails I have daily critics, feedback, hate and love mails but transferring that to a more or less open platform is a nice possibility. So if you are on Facebook please “Become a fan of Budapestagent.com on Facebook”I would be more than happy.
As I am really into Social Media at the moment you can also follow me on Twitter.
I needed a blog design change on this blog so I changed it to a more travel, Budapest related and added the Agent in the top left. Of course this design is not the perfect one and still there are some things to do but for now that should be it. The old one was simply to boring.
As I said on Twitter yesterday (hint: Follow me) I try a new blog design (in Twitter it says “profile” which is wrong) thats done now and I am taking into consideration to move the entire project from the CMS I am using now to Wordpress. Why? Simply because Wordpress is so awesome, easy to use and offers tons of Plugins and Extensions which take a long time to get for the CMS I use now.
The problem is that by now Budapestagent.com is so large already that it will not be easy to move alle the pages to Wordpress so easy as well as the entire structure of it. As I am in big stress at the moment with moving, work and another soon to be anounced issue it is not an easy task to get all this done within a couple of days plus I need somebody who knows all about databases where I am an absolute looser in.
So now you have a little overview about what is going on, what is planned and where the way should go. Cheers..
Sorry for not wiriting anything for such a long time but at the moment I am a bit stressed due to moving within the city. The apartment I lived in is now completly empty and the house which I bought is packed with all that stuff but nothing is in the right place, not all walls are painted, not all floors tiled and so on. So there is a lot of stuff to do. Additionally the company I work for has problems moving my internet access from one place to the other and so on.
But in the last days I have been working a bit on Budapestagent.com added some new concerts, restaurants and did some other feauture like the related articles and so on. But I am busy with other projects as well some dealig with Budapest some not. In near future I want to work over some of the existing pages and add new such as a entire section for students in Budapest with a lot of information for the student life here in Budapest.
Thats it with the news, the moving really costs a lot of time, power and patience but it is about to end soon than you will hear more from me again including probably very soon a new, better, nicer blog design. Cheers.
The new Metro / subway trains arrived in Budapest. Brand new, white and for sure more secure than the old ones the Metro wagos arrived by bus late last month. I don’t know if these trains are only for the new build, soon to be ready (couple more years?) Metro 4 or for all Budapest Metro lines. Check out the Video:
Looks nice and shiny. The question is when these trains will make their first ride in Europes second oldest metro system.