Dear Fellow Toastmaster,

We have some good news to share. First of all, congratulations to Viktor Morandini, CC, who represented Hungary on the Division level contest with his humourous speech this last weekend, and took the silver-medal 2nd place! Second, we warmly welcome our Hungarian-speaking sister club, Pestbeszéd as a newly registered club, No. 3461223. As before, their meetings are held on Thursdays from 18.30 at Kaptár Office.

Next, a call from the District Conference organizing team: Would you like to make friends and have fun with four hundred Toastmasters from all over Europe on your doorstep in Budapest? Yes, the November District Conference is fast approaching. This is a unique opportunity to meet this many Toastmasters in Budapest as it is the last District Conference before our District is split into two smaller districts in 2014. Meet and greet Europe’s most entertaining Toastmasters, giving speeches in English, German and French. Don’t miss it! Registration and programme details on budapestlal.com. We are also looking for people who can host a visiting Toastmaster for one to three nights during the conference. Show them the best of Budapest! Contact Eszter Hamori if you can help: travellingtoastmaster@gmail.com. Conference date: November 15-16-17th, location: ELTE Gólyavár at Astoria.

Looking back at this week, we had several inspiring speeches and fun table topics. On Monday, three very experienced speakers competed against each other, with speeches from different advanced manuals. Barnabás Szilágyi, ACS, talked about how an achievement also entails some sacrifice in the background, Club President Eszter Farnady, CC, advocated for the online registration platform EasySpeak, and Immediate Past President Attila Szabó, CC, entertained with a personal story of drama and humour. The result: an absolute tie between speakers! Table Topics evolved around brand marketing, and was won by the pair Viktor Morandini and Ashraf Sadek. US Toastmaster Joel Schanker, DTM, visited our club, as part of his short stay in Budapest. (Thank you for the summary to Ildikó Szilágyi.)

This past Tuesday the Skylarks had a salubrious meeting (yes, that was the word of the day, thanks to Grammarian Tamas Lippner). Gabor Peto tried his hand at being the Toastmaster for the first time, and he pulled it off magnificently.  Afterwards he even admitted how much he enjoyed it!  Timea Klebercz gave her Icebreaker, telling us about her experiences participating in parliamentary debate over the past few years, and  Viki Sarkany gave a very heartfelt evaluation of Timea’s speech. Table Topics Master Gabor Klinger, CC, challenged the members to present their startup business ideas and convince a forum of investors to support their venture.  We had three Toastmasters guests, Leslie and Ron from Seattle (Leslie won the Table Topics round), and Judit who has attended Toastmasters in Bucharest.  Next week Gabor Klinger will be the Toastmaster, and Viki Sarkany will give her 7th speech. (Thank you for the summary to Peter Temesvary, ACB.)

See you again next week,
Your Budapest Toastmasters Executive Committee