Welcome to Pestiside.hu

What is Pestiside.hu?
Pestiside.hu is an English-language web magazine covering current events, gossip, living, style, entertainment and just about everything else happening in Hungary that may be of interest to the international community. It has been featured on Hungarian state television, as well as on origo.hu, Népszabadság and numerous other Hungarian and international media outlets.

So it's for expats.
Don't say "expats" – we hate that word, and all the loneliness, alienation and boring embassy parties it implies. We much prefer "internationals" or "cosmopolitans." Either way, Pestiside is not just for foreigners, but for anyone with a bit of English and who habzsolja az életet. (That's Hungarian for joie de vivre.) And while it should be of greatest interest to people who live in Hungary, it is also a useful tool for visitors, and an enjoyable read for anyone anywhere interested in finding out what's going on in the New Europe, unfiltered by the mainstream commercial media.

Is it a blog?
Well, even though we were once voted the "Best New Weblog in Europe," we'd still say not really. What today's media-savvy people call "blogs" are usually non-commercial, one-man (or woman) operations unconstrained by a specific editorial focus or the need for professional-quality writing and graphics. But Pestiside does share some common features with blogs, most notably a structure that puts the most recent article on the top on some of our pages, and which allows us to easily publish and update stories and other content as events dictate, rather than according to a pre-set daily, weekly, monthly or (in the case of guidebooks) yearly or semi-annual schedule. It also makes it exquisitely easy and enjoyable for the reader to access and use this content.

Interesting. But the content is probably still the same as in all the other publications and websites aimed at tourists and expa... sorry, "internationals."
Far from it. For one thing, we try not to be boring. On Pestiside, you'll never see long-winded, suck-up interviews with deputy state secretaries or the heads of companies that happen to advertise, or stale, cliché-filled features about local tourist attractions. You'll also never be forced to click through several pages only to find out that the story you are looking for is just a link, or a cut-and-paste job from another website. What you will instead find are spicy and incisive original items about the things that make Hungary actually worth living in or visiting, and pithy recaps of the most important and colorful local news. Frankly, life is just too short to do it any other way.

What does the name "Pestiside" mean?
It's just a pun about the name of the busier half of Budapest and the stuff you use to kill English-speaking rats and insects with. It is also a tribute to the "Pestaside" group of English-langue writers and actors who first began working in Budapest in the years just following the changes of 1989-1990.

Who is this "we" you keep talking about?
There is actually a publishing group behind the site, vaguely called the All Hungary Media Group.

Great! Can I advertise on Pestiside?
We thought you'd never ask!