Music

Magna Cum Laude is an up and coming team of musicians in Hungary with most their songs getting to the radio top lists quite surprisingly. They bring a fresh style to the Hungarian pop scene, and I must admit I love their music. Their clips also show a certain affinity to good humor. Some of their hits are up on YouTube, so you can check them out (warning: Hungarian lyrics). One of my faves is Visszhang ("Echo" in English):

Only time will tell whether they manage to keep up with creating hits at this pace. Also check out Te légy most ("Be with me" in English), Színezd újra ("Recolor your life" in English) and Minden állomás ("Every station" in English) if you like this one.

Due to the Microsoft event, I had no time yet to blog about the very first Hungarian Drupal User Group event, which took place in Szeged late last week, and was actually organized by the Belgian living in Hungary: Kristof Van Tomme. He has a very good sense of selecting what makes a fun event. The meeting started off with a short presentation by Kristof about Drupal's main selling points, then continued with a discussion on collaboration possibilities, and ended up with some fine wine tasting at a different location.

One of the intesting takeaways from the event was that numerous people showed up from Temesvár, which is located in Romania 200 kilometers away (close enough so they said). Actually, Budapest (Hungary's capital) was equally far, however Hungarian developers mostly showed up only from around the city. So it turned out to be an "international" gathering of sorts, especially with Kristof translating wine introductions from Hungarian to English.

The day was topped off with a world music concert by the relatively new Fabula Rasa formation (beware, popup not required for proper site operation). They played great music and told unbelievable fantasy stories built around every song they have. We arrived a bit late, but they were also late starting so the few of us who kept being there from the group enjoyed the whole concert into the night.

Of course this great gathering started off some powers in Budapest for a meeting there, and organization is underway. We will see how it goes hopefully soon.

Jamie Winchester and Róbert Hrutka formed their band six years ago, but they become well known in Hungary (as far as I know) after one of their songs was used in a local mobile carrier's commercial. Although that was quite some time ago, they release thrilling songs ever since, and the quality of their work is constantly amazing for my ears. Here is one one of their fine songs, titled "Take me home".