Domino

2 blogs in one day?! you cry....

..yes

Budapest!

Last summer I decided to eschew (look it up) british festivals in favour of going and trying the european equivilant.

My reasons for doing so were many - up until that point I'd been an avid Reading & Glastonbury goer, however raising prices, falling standards of bands and generally wanting to smack 90% of the people at these festivals in the chops meant I wasn't really up for it in 2007.

So that meant either spend the summer getting the network back up to spec or go abroad.


After my passport cam through I needed to decide which festival I was gonna ruin for everyone else.

After a bit of searching I happened across the Sziget festival in budapest.

Wikipedia says

The Sziget Festival (pronounced see'-get [see' has the quality (not length) of the vowel in the word seat]) is one of Europe's largest music and cultural festivals, held annually in August in Budapest, Hungary. The festival takes place on Óbudai-sziget ("Old-Buda Island"), an island on the Danube, thus Sziget stands for Island. Currently it boasts more than 1000 performances each year.

The week-long festival has grown from a relatively low-profile 1993 student event to become one of the definitive European rock festivals by the late 1990's, with about half of all visitors coming from outside Hungary. Attendancy rates surpassed the 250 000 mark in 1997 and the 350 000 mark in 2001. The all-time peak year was 2005 with 385 000 visitors.

yes, you read that 350 000 people. on an island.

to put that in context, glastonburys capacity is 177,000 and Readings is 80,000. SO this is huge.

Last Years Main artists: [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manu_Chao"]Manu Chao[/ame] (F), The Good, the Bad and the Queen (UK),[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chemical_Brothers"]The Chemical Brothers[/ame] (UK), [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gogol_Bordello"]Gogol Bordello[/ame] (USA), [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurent_Garnier"]Laurent Garnier[/ame] (F), Pink (USA), Madness (UK), [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rakes"]The Rakes[/ame] (UK), [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hives"]The Hives[/ame] (S), [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Inch_Nails"]Nine Inch Nails[/ame] (USA), [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razorlight"]Razorlight[/ame] (UK), Sinéad O'Connor (IRL), [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless"]Faithless[/ame] (UK), Tool (USA), [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagles_Of_Death_Metal"]Eagles Of Death Metal[/ame] (USA), The Killers (USA), [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quimby"]Quimby[/ame] (H), [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Blondy"]Alpha Blondy[/ame] (CIV), [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankcsapda"]Tankcsapda[/ame] (H), Kispál és a Borz (H) and [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ennio_Marchetto"]Ennio Marchetto[/ame] (IT)

however, there are a HUGE amount of other stages, everything from death metal to Jazz to Folk to Dance

In addition to music, the festival offers a plethora of other activities including [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film"]cinema[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance"]dance[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre"]theatre[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tattoo"]tattooing[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet"]Internet[/ame] access, [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volleyball"]volleyball[/ame], [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis"]tennis[/ame], football, [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungee_jumping"]bungee jumping[/ame] and a life-sized [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_football"]foosball[/ame] (which was awesome btw)

Also the city's gorgeous


There's fun and games



And the beers dirt cheap (90p a pint!) and the cocktails come in buckets




So yeah, a week long festival, for 120 Euros (90squid-ish with about 90 for flights). So a whole week of fun and games, for less than a glasto ticket.

No contest


Pictures http://www.facebook.com/album.php?ai...a&id=861960242
&
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?ai...1&id=515312458