Hungary

Mark here, I havent posted for a while so thought I’d drop in and fill you in on our Hungarian dates… I believe Marty left you all in Helsinki. SO after a sleepless night after our helsinki show myself, Dave, Marty and Antza head to Vaanta airport to make our flight for budapest hungary, having so much gear its always a bit of a pain to check in but we seem to make it through. Marty and Antza continued some boozing before we boarded but we all passed out imedietly on the plan only to wake up to some kind of omlet then pass out again. On arriving to Budapest we made our way to the Marco Polo hotel in central budapest, budapest is always special to me, its a place with so much history, every building tells you a story, the architecture just leaves you breathless, they tell tales of an empire once so grand. This being our third trip to Budapest in the last 5 years I can say I’ve seen hungary progress and move forward and move away from its troubled past…but back to the story at hand:)

Our first night in Budapest was a night off which we needed, so we checked in, went about doing our washing, cleaning up and getting some sleep, met with our promoter balazs who took us to a lovely lunch. It was really great having Antza along playing guitar and the brotherhood between the 4 of us immediate so our first night off in Budapest was a great one, we went out hit the town for a bit and just had a great time, hungary is quite cheap so it was a welcome change from finland to our hip pockets.

After a last night antza and myself work up and restrung our guitars and jammed pink floyd echos for a while, this was really nice, then we decided to explore the town for a while walking around budapest for about 4 hours, which was great.

We met up with Marty and Dave for Dinner and began to get ready for the show at the ‘After Music Club’… the crowd was already healthy by the time we got to the venue and the vibe was great, many good people and we also met up with our hungarian tour manager Tebore (not sure of the spelling) who is just insane to say the least:) Neverland did a great set and we hit the stage at about 11.30. I knew from the first notes of ‘Silence’ this would be a great show! The crowd was energetic and emotive and we fed on them like vampires!:) and also being antza’s second show with us he did a great job! We did a full set, at the last note balazs gave us shots and beers and we proceeded to do ‘to drown’ as an encore. The corwd chanted and cheered and it was also great to see quite a few knew the words, which is alwasy nice! So after a high energy set we partied into the night amd tried to get a few hours rest before heading to Szeged for our second and last Hungarian show.

Tebore picked us up late afternoon and we made our way to the city of szeged to a club with a name so long it escapes me right now, it was about a 2-3 our drive and we slept at least half of it, touring at some point just beomes about sleeping when you can, on floors, park benchs, you name it, we have slept on it haha

The Szeged crowd was great to us, very similar to budapest, energetic and emotive and once again folks singing along, even though we were as tired as hell they brought us to life and another great set with an encore and the never ending after party, this was strange as the venure was full of couches half the people were passed out in chairs at 3 am, on this night we where also sleeping in the venue which left us not smelling so great the next day:) Tebore was in great form this evening and had as all in tears of laughter so thank you tebore:) haha

Beofre we head back to Budapest we had lunch with my good friend anita at a traditional hungarian resturant and also took a nice stroll around Szeged, so thank you anita, we then made the 2 hour drive back to budapest and made our way to the hotel which was near the airport ready for our trip to the USA. This was also a sad night as Antza was not to be joining us in the USA and we would be continuing on as a three piece, but we all had a nice evening together regardless and reflected on what a fun time we had had.

The next morning at around 6 am we made our way to the budapest airport and checked in for our next adventure… America…

Thank you to Balazs, Tebore, Anita and all the other great friends we made in Budapest, see you next time!