Budapest Christmas Fair 2012
Budapest Christmas Fair 2012, (from the 16th of November to the 30th of December 2012) is one of the most popular Christmas fairs in Europe. If you want to buy something unique and original for your loved ones, Vörösmarty Square is the perfect market for you. Ideally located in the Vörösmarty Square, this market is a fundamental part of Vaci utca, downtown Budapest.
To entertain the market visitors, there will be live folk, jazz, world music concerts and dance performances every day from 17.00 to 20.00. Also, there will be puppet shows that will take place on weekends during the morning.
122 stalls offer high quality products (selected and approved by a special jury of folk art experts).
Gastronomy: Besides the usual Budapest culinary delights (kürtös kalács, pizza and bread baked in clay oven) you can taste traditional Hungarian Christmas dishes: fish, roast goose leg, foie gras, and stuffed cabbage as well as sausages and grilled meat.
You’ll have the chance to see spectacular Christmas light shows on Café Gerbeaud façade from the 30th of November to the 23rd of December at 17.00, 18.00, 19.00 and 20.00.
The Budapest Christmas Fair is the best place to buy unique Christmas gifts: All products are handmade and selected by a group of a professional jury that ensures their quality.
So if you visit the Budapest Christmas Fair 2012 you’ll have the chance to see many cultural programs, including folk music performances that will be perform, while you are shopping.
As in previous years, there will be a live nativity scene in the square with a cot and animals. You can also take part in a Christmas tree decorating contest.
Moreover, from the 15m high of the Christmas tree, the flame of peace, brought by scouts from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, greets visitors to this festive market. During the Advent season, a new candle is lit every weekend until Christmas to celebrate the arrival of this special holiday.
Santa Claus will greet children during the following three days:
4th of December from 11.00 to 13.00 and from 15.00 to 18.00.
5th of December from 16.00 to 19.00.
On the 6th of December, the Finnish Santa will greet children from 14:00 to 16:00.
The Budapest Christmas Fair at Vörösmarty Square is one of the favorite events among tourists during winter. Even if you have no intention of buying anything, it is a wonderful experience to stroll among the stalls, enjoy a glass of mulled wine and see some of the cultural programs at the outdoor stage.
There is always a nice party atmosphere, where you’ll find unique design products, as well as a great cultural program. It is the ideal place to go with family and children.
Opening Hours: Monday to Friday: 12.00 – 20.00, weekends: 10.00 – 20.00.
If you want more information about the event, click on the following link: http://www.budapest-tourist-guide.com/budapest-christmas-fair.html
Cinta Blanch
Book apartments in Budapest and enjoy one of the best Christmas fairs in Europe. Don’t forget to get some gifts for your loved ones.
WAMP Budapest: The International Design Fair is in fashion
If the Swedes have a reputation for being the creators of the IKEA world, the Hungarians are not far behind in that aspect. They are the kings of what could be labelled the eighth art. WAMP is the design fair par excellence and if you go to Budapest, you can come back with many ideas and anecdotes of this field. This is a fair for professionals and design fans attracted by the beauty of its shapes. Welcome to the International Design Fair.
WAMP is a fair that makes the Hungarians proud, and rightly so. It´s definitely worth a visit. Its first edition was in 2006 and it was so successful that it has been prolonged until today, with a record attendance in each edition. It takes place once a month and, on many occasions and weather permitting, the stands are set up on Erzsébet Square, while in the winter, the fair takes place indoors at the Club Gödör.
This design fair is very successful not just in Budapest but also in other places around the world. The mouth-to-mouth and the social networks are in charge of spreading its message and attracting thousands of followers. Actually, on its Facebook page, it has millions of fans, since WAMP isn´t just a place for shopping but also a meeting point for young Hungarians.
There are items for all tastes and some of them very original. And that´s what it´s about, from clothes, leather goods, furniture, photography, paintings, recycled items, jewellery, ceramics, gastronomy items, toys and decoration items. This is a place where electronic music mixes with art, a curious mix but a unique experience nonetheless. In this independent design fair, that seems to be very popular and in fashion, more than a hundred artists take part in it. Entry is free and it´s also within everyone´s reach. Art isn´t a luxury and we have to get that idea out of our head when we go to this type of events. We could say that “design isn´t a luxury product” is its motto, since there you can find affordable items for all wallets. The most exquisite characters can also buy luxury items, but the norm is that most things on sale are excellent value for money.
The profile of the WAMP visitors is varied. Young people from 15 to 35 years old attend, as well as some 40 and 50 somethings that are in search for something different to what they already have. The truth is that it´s a meeting place for artists and buyers, one of those places that you always end up buying something.
Such has been its reception in the city of Budapest that the organizers of the International Fair of Design, WAMP, have been studying the possibility of extending and setting up in other Hungarian cities, and even as far as moving to the Netherlands.
And if you visit this fair and you still want more art, the best thing to do is walk around the beautiful Chain Bridge (crossing the Danube is pure art) or visit the Parliament Building, where you can lose yourself in the beauty of the ancestors of this city. In Budapest, everything is affordable art; in the streets, in the squares… there´s nothing like travelling to this city, known as the Pearl of the Danube, to enjoy its street art.
DianaRPretel
If you want to visit the International Fair of Design, WAMP, start by booking your accommodation in Budapest here. Come on, what are you waiting for? This is a luxury within everyone´s reach, since design can fit in any pocket.
OSAS PLUS in Budapest
As of the first of May, the Vasarely Museum in Budapest will open the OSAS PLUS exhibit performed by founding artists of the Open Structure Art Society (OSAS). This year the exhibition is an interesting proposal where each artist is also an OSAS curator, therefore proposing a free thematic exhibit without restrictions as to subject or any order. The exhibition is organized around 10 artists and other Hungarian artists that do not belong to OSAS as well as international guest artists . The art historian Julia N. Mészáros and the collector and art critic Andras Szollosi-Nagy, participate as curators.
OSAS began doing these shows in 2006. Three years later there was a second version and with OSAS PLUS the third version is on, and with it a tradition in the area of the Museums exhibits. Despite the distance between these exposures, these six years have successfully completed 14 other thematic exhibitions of contemporary art at the Vasarely Museum making it the headquarters of their exhibitions, where the topics range from graphic arts to conceptual art and even designing of ornamentation.
As part of the exhibition wanted to pay tribute to the sculptor Hetey Katalin, who died in 2010, an exhibition with his final drafts and sketches of completed works has been organized. As a special part of the exhibition it will also display the graphic album titled Piece Unique, an art piece by the members of OSAS, of which there are only fifteen copies available.
The ten artists on exhibition are: István Haász, Gáyor Tibor Konok Tamás, Dora Maurer, Mengyán András István Harasztÿ, Judith Nem, Vera Molnar, Janos and Istvan Nadler Megyik. They have selected their own work, some is recent and some is old and everyone invited a Hungarian or international artists to exhibit part of their work.
Tibor Gáyor is a Hungarian painter who orders visual elements to give strength and meaning to the content of his work. From the 60s his works of geometric and abstract paintings give a set of tones that are consistent with his visual puns.
János Megyik: His work always walks on the edge of architecture, sculpture and painting. He uses simple materials to give three-dimensional volume to his work and plays with colors to confront the planes, always giving volume to his images.
Vera Molnar is a Hungarian painter who has described her work as a logic search of creation. Currently she working in computer-aided construction of simple geometric shapes, that is changing gradually as to see the evolution and transformation that occurs through successive amendments.
Judith Nem is a Hungarian artist representative of the geometric art of the 50s and 60s, she has also worked in the creative tendency of the “book as an object” as well as computer graphic art. She currently lives in Paris.
For more information: http://www.vasarely.hu/kiallitasok_en/index.php?main_menu[main_menu][item]=3&lang[lang]=en
Nancy Guzman
To change and look at life with more optimism in difficult times it is recommended to take a few days off, so take advantage of the arrival of spring and rent apartments in Budapest You will not regret it.
The Golden Age of American Rock Posters in Budapest
Until the 31st of December, the Kogart Gallery in Budapest exhibits From San Francisco to Woodstock – the Golden Age of American Posters 1965-1971. The Kogart Gallery remembers the music festival which marked an era and a way of resistance towards the society of consumption in the 20th century, through posters which shaped the psychedelic art trend, concentrating in the products of the area of the San Francisco Bay.
The posters mark, in a majestic way, a time of great social transformations which shaped art, music and politics, and generated a unique aesthetic in all the social fields. In those years, San Francisco, California, was an effervescent place full of activities which changed the everyday life of the city and its surroundings with the Beatnik and Hippy culture, as well as with more radical movements such as the Black Panthers who fought for civil rights and social change.
The graphic work which these exhibited posters show not only have the historical interest of remembering a time and the Woodstock Festival, but in them they have the signs of a new visual art current, which are linked to Central European traditions. The exhibition also contains other items of that time, such as original documents of the manuscripts which were made for these projects, sketches and the tools used for their making.
The Woodstock Festival, whose complete name was Woodstock. 3 days of Peace & Music, was the music and art rock festival which shined the light the most on the hippy movement and their ideals of pacific co-existence and rejecting the Vietnam War, where thousands of people died every day. This took place on a farm in Bethel, in Sullivan County, close to New York, on the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th of August 1969. The initial project was to carry it out in the town of Woodstock, Ulster County, New York, but the local conservative population opposed the idea of the festival taking place where men and women of dubious reputation would attend, who would sleep together and as a group. From there it got its initial name but, in the end, Sam Yasgur convinced his father Max Yagsur to facilitate the lands of his property.
The festival, full of passivity, only had three deaths, but none of them product of violence, and it gave birth to two children full of the spirit of love and peace.
On its great stage, they sung against the war and in favour of the revolution, they paid tribute to Latin America, the burned American flags in disgust due to their imperialist politics, and the most important rock icons of all time shone, such as Joe Cocker with his t-shirt which shaped fashion, Jimi Hendrix, who made the most impressive guitar solo ever playing the American anthem and imitating war sounds with his strumming, and Joan Baez with her songs of social protest, amongst over a hundred artists.
The documentary on Woodstock. 3 Days of Peace & Music, directed by Michael Wadleigh and edited and produced among others by Martin Scorsese, reached the cinema screens around the world in 1970, causing a real furore among the young population. For this documentary, the director obtained the Oscar for Best Documentary.
For more information: http://kogart.hu/kogart/en/index.jsp
Nancy Guzman
This exhibition is a great way to remember the golden age of the 60s, so rent apartments in Budapest and relive those times where the dream for world peace seemed to be within reach.
Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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Wamp in Budapest
To talk about design in todays day and age is to be aware of what is really going on in the field of aesthetic exploration and production and marketing means. All of it is linked with one another: dont expect that the new t-shirt that youve bought in the kitschiest shop in your city has nothing to do with any new conceptual agenda or relation with the newest in political complaints or new ways of production which are environment-friendly. Many designers, today go for green trends, an option which as well as helping the planet with its immediate corrosion and destruction, works as an even more seductive factor for the product youre about to consume; and its more than obvious, dont let them fool you: behind any attempt of political correctness theres also a catch to get more money out of you so that others make more money.
The ease that design production is made with these days, thanks in the same way to quicker and more efficient means of production, makes that many young people can show their work and that theres a larger variety of new possibilities. Despite that quantity doesnt mean quality, whats true is that among more range of choice regarding fashion, accessories, objects, music or home decoration, there are better options of finding the right gift or fetish. In other words, as well as being a very good option so that thousands of creative people gather, Wamp is also one of the best places to find the most unusual and special Christmas gift, which will surely delight the person receiving the gift, because they will have a unique stylish item, and especially because it will be the latest in Budapests world of design.
And so, Wamp is more than a market, its a designers exhibition, a space of action, an emerging community of new talents in Budapest. Wamp presents itself once or twice a month during the year. This way, the best in design is available for citizens, tourists, curious people and everyone who is passing by or lives in the beautiful city of Budapest. This way, Wamp is the perfect meeting place for creative people from around the world, as well as the trend setters who search for the cutting edge in European fashion.
Wamp presents the best in graphic arts, photography, painting, sculpture, ceramics, home textiles, fashion, accessories, jewelry, furniture and gastronomy. Some of the names you have to remember when visiting Wamp are, MÍO Design, Gera Noémi, Muka Viktória, Kaintz Regina, Czeizler Zsolt, Földi Klára, Ligeti Miklós, BringaBag, Becker Judit, Csekő Etelka and MUSU among others. For more information on Wamp visit the following webpage: http://www.wamp.hu/
Alexa Ray
Get apartments in Budapest and be part of its vibrant cultural life as well as the unmissable Wamp Market, where youll definitely find what you were looking for in new fashion, design and accessories. Highly recommended for artists, designers, art critics and, of course, trend setters.
Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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The Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest
The traveler who rents apartments in Budapest and wanders the streets gazing at the random Art Nouveau style buildings may be surprised when they come upon number 33 Üllői avenue and see an imposing fin-de-siecle building topped by a dazzling dome of green ceramic tiles, bordered here and there in yellow, a seductively beautiful combination.
You will be unable to resist the powerful pull of such beauty, and enter the Museum of Applied Arts, one of the most emblematic buildings by Ödön Lechner (1845 -1914), the “father” of Hungarian modern architecture and a key figure in the development of the language of modern Hungarian design.
The aim of Lechner, in line with the rejection of historicism in architecture and applied arts that had already spread throughout Europe, was to shape a new era in art through the delivery of a new style.
The truth is that the city seemed to be prepared. One could argue persuasively that, despite the importance of Vienna and the emergence of the Secession movement, Budapest was at that point the most modern city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
However, although both Lechner and other Hungarian artists admiringly watched with interest the emergence of Art Nouveau in Europe, it was still seen, even by his supporters, as an international and thus rather alien phenomenon, especially in an era when nationalism gained fast followers.
It was therefore necessary to accommodate the Art Nouveau aesthetic within the conditions of Hungarian culture, which on the other hand, unlike the later Art Deco movement, which was a truly international style in the fullest sense of the word and occurred in all countries of the continent in one way or another. The Museum of Applied Arts is a perfect example of that enterprise, and reflects perhaps like no other building Lechner´s interest in melding new techniques and building materials such as wrought iron and glass with tradition. The building is an attempt, as he put it, “combine the primitive rawness of Magyar folk art with the refinement of French culture.” He considered the way in which British imperial architecture had integrated Indian architectural forms as the archetypal model of this type of synthesis.
As in most of Lechner´s major projects, the Museum uses ornamental models designed to establish continuity with the Hungarian past (the case of the dome, for example) while still using the most modern engineering techniques. Thus, by combining materials such as brick, ceramics, glass and wrought iron, he was able to create a building that, while characteristically Hungarian, does not seem to be beholden to historical precedent and established his legacy as a pioneer and key player in the history of modern architecture in Hungary .
Paul Oilzum
Translated by: salome antigone
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