Until recently, Sziget in Hungary, was one of the European festival scene’s best-kept secret – to us Brits anyway. I feel almost guilty writing this. As much as I don’t want it to become another EXIT Festival and be swamped by a deluge of pasty Brits, it’s heading that way – but to be honest I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Like EXIT, the festival also started off as a small-scale student celebration, back in 1993 – although not with the political connotations of its Serbian colleague. “Sziget” means “island” in Hungarian – reason being that it takes place on Obudai Island in Budapest. In Budapest you say? An island in Budapest? How does that work? Well, Budapest is bisected by the River Danube into the old Buda side, and the newer, more business-focused Pest side – and in the middle of this wide river lie two islands. Obudai is a long, thin island, and for one week every year it becomes one of the biggest parties in Europe. There’s a sizable contingent of dance acts for us to check out, plus all manner of rock, pop, blues, jazz, world music, reggae, and trash metal (a look at the programme reveals that Watch My Dying, Pro-Pain and Three Inches Of Blood are all playing – yay). There are over 60 different arenas, tents, stages, bars and activity tents to check out, including a wedding registry office (which tied 300 knots every day), a foreign exchange office, an Olympics viewing arena, spiritual activities, arts and crafts areas, a poker and games area, table football, table tennis, an adventure castle, street theatre, zip lines, bungee jumps, and something called the Dancing Rabbi which we never quite figured out.
The map of the festival
In short, it’s huge. You can camp or travel in to the festival every day from your Budapest residence, but the camping option is pleasingly more comfortable than at many other for example - if you pick your spot right. Members of our group pitch up on the North tip of the island – right on the beach looking onto the river, protected from the 37 degree heat by the shade of trees, and far enough away from any music to allow peaceful resting. Accessing the festival from the city is painless – with bus services to and from the festival until 5:30AM, several party boat services from the riverbank (with bar and soundsystem), a train service stopping 3 minutes from the island and taxis costing £10 or less to and from the city centre.
A blow-by-blow account of this huge festival would be far too lengthy to recount – or endure – so we’ll guide you through some of the highlights. The festival used to run for 7 “full” days, but this year consisted of 5 such days, and 2 preludes. “Day Minus One” saw the campsites open, and a limited programme of Hungarian music – cunningly not advertised on the English version of the website, allowing the locals to have a bit of national pride before the majority of the foreigners arrive. We arrive on “Day Zero”, which sees Iron Maiden play on the main stage, with no other official programmes – yet we soon stumble across a DJ blasting out cool house and garage beats outside the Meduza Est stage, and it’s clear that if you want to start the party tonight, you’re more than welcome to.
In terms of dance and electronic music, there are three main areas. The aforementioned Meduza Est stage is superb – an open-air octagonal structure with a lowered dancefloor and a raised perimeter, a kicking soundsystem, and three projectors displaying amazing visuals onto three of the huge walls. The atmosphere is frequently electric here, with sprinklers poised above the crowd to provide relief from the baking sun during the day, and over the course of the week we hear Hungarian DJs deliver superb breaks, dubstep and drum ‘n’ bass sets, with a mesmerising mash of huge electro and nu-rave beasts served up by national dance music institution Palotai, and F-Communication’s The Youngsters churning out deliciously chunky, arse-shaking minimal techno.
The MasterCard Party Arena is the main dance tent, and has its moments despite feeling a little sterile (the intrusive MasterCard branding as you come in through the deliberately small, captive audience entrance is awful) – like Justice packing the tent out and leaving hundreds outside, Ferry Corsten bringing back huge classics like the Gouryella remix of Binary Finary’s 1998, or Noisia stepping in for an absent Chase & Status with their usual gut-wrenching selection of D&B and rugged, razor-sharp breaks (with added vocal support from Foreign Beggars – a brilliant and unplanned combination).
Finally the Mokka Cuka arena near the entrance of the island is another superb place to drop by day or night – this year it’s operating on a 24 hour basis, and labelled as the official “Sziget afterparty”. The dancefloor is house under a wooden gazebo, with two bars and loads of seating and dancing space around it, and speakers suspended below the entrance sign as you come into the area. Messiness ensues over the course of the week as a predominantly D&B-led musical policy is adopted – with some superb sets from local talents that we stumble across. There’s also a wonderful ambient tent just round the corner, filled with mellow sounds (although at 5AM on the last night they seem to be playing cool minimal techno), chai tea, and plenty of cushions, blankets and things to lie on the adjacent garden area for when it all gets too much. Bodies are strewn all over the place, and couples snuggling under duvets as groups of friends smoke themselves into oblivion.
The “world music” programme at Sziget is also fantastic – with the Afro-Latin stage featuring everything from inch-perfect reggae bands to impromptu African drumming sessions, and the World Music stage serving up performances from Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry & Adrian Sheerwood, and Mory Kante (who we see performing the stunning original version of the Hardfloor-remixed classic Yeke Yeke). Then there’s also dozens of bars with DJs and smaller dancefloors all over the island playing uplifting D&B, breaks and peak-time house and electro, and other random surprises such as on the Unicum Next stage, where we stumble across Hungarian beatbox champion Döme – who is quite unlike anything we’ve ever heard. A few other tents have occasional electronic performances across the week – the A38 Tent hosting one of the most raucous crowds at the whole festival for Modeselektor’s awesome set, and the WAN2 seeing hip-hop junkies like Holland’s Pete Philly & Perquisite and Delinquent Habits getting busy along with our faves Kraak & Smaak (albeit with a grubby soundsystem).
There’s an abundance of bars serving everything from £1 beers to cocktail buckets, food stalls serving everything from churros to Pad Thai, and if you want to get away from all the hecticness, you can just wade through the tents and trees and chill on the beach by the river and watch the sunrise. There’s just so much to do here – never a dull moment. Something to suit every mood, every energy level, and every time of day. The crowd are, on the whole, absolutely lovely – with frequent hilarious encounters with people of all nationalities – and everyone’s out to have the time of their life. It’s not as intense as an all-out wreckfest like EXIT – there’s more space and you can get away from the crowds should you want to. And play Frisbee more importantly.
All this positive gushing comes before even mentioning the likes of R.E.M., MGMT, The Kooks, Babyshambles, Killers, Jamiroquai, Roisin Murphy, The Presidents Of The United States Of America and The Cribs on the main stage – or about 70% of the other bits going on during the festival. It’s mammoth. And at €150 for a camping ticket, it’s very much value for money. Go next year. You won’t be disappointed. 385,000 people can’t be wrong...
GETTING THERE
Flights to Budapest are available from nine UK airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Bristol, Luton, Liverpool, Manchester, East Midlands, Glasgow and Dublin. Prices start from £45 (including taxes) per person for a return trip in November flying with Wizzair (www.wizzair.com) from Luton.
Budapest has an excellent range of accommodation to suit all budgets and tastes from hostels through to three, four and five star hotels, and from traditional design to contemporary chic and boutique properties. For more information about Hungary visit www.gotohungary.co.uk