So This Was Christmas

It started with Easter weather, but went on to become quite polar. The cats did not break the tree, hard as they tried, but the little one tested her first snow. The red star shone on, and I can still find a store or two that sells Christmas candles for dinosaurs like me. All in all, a great success.

The Christmas Post

Crăciun Fericit! Boldog Karácsonyt! Merry Christmas! Joyeux Noël Buon Natale! Hyvää joulua! Frohe Weihnachten! Feliz Navidad! God Jul! Срећан Божић! Bon Nadal!

December Sunday in Bratislava

I kind of failed to properly make it to any of the Budapest Christmas fairs this year, don’t really know why, it seems as if December just shrunk into something like half a week instead of being one whole proper month. And I still refuse to do Christmassy stuff in November. Vienna on the other hand is wonderful but one more Asian tourist sticking their minute camera into my grog and I won’t assume further responsibility for my deeds.

So we said let’s give Bratislava a try. Well Bratislava herself didn’t try all that much, and kept on being a tiny Prague. And that includes good beer. And good beer is success even if I can safely conclude that for the hot wine you don’t really need to move out of Budapest. Which means the Hungarian railway company won’t double your travelling time because..well, they felt like it, I guess, but that of course isn’t Bratislava’s fault after all.

Yelle @ A38

After waxing lyrical yesterday about the presence of space in Icelandic music, today I should tackle another rather country specific sound, namely French electro. Allowing myself a gross generalization, since it’s Friday and I can claim I’m mentally tired or something, French electro generally sounds more cerebral than it’s Anglo-Saxon counterpart, but is not as rigidly engineered as the German one. So it’s the kind of music you can admit to listening to without compromising the pretence of a sophisticated taste, but it’s so much fun nonetheless.

Reading through the French press (another one of those sophisticated things you can do on a Friday), it does however seem that Yelle is apparently more successful abroad then in her homeland, and not sparing you the well nobody is a prophet in their own country part, I can only confirm that the Budapest crowd definitely loved her.

It probably helps that she’s one of those artists who don’t consider electro to be an excuse to sit behind a keyboard and/or Mac, but music that should be performed and especially danced to. The fact that she does it all in splendid red metallic leggings is just the icing on the cake.