The New Europe
"Where we in the UK might go slightly bonkers about a one day festival…these guys call a festival a gathering that lasts for five days, or a week, a month..."
If, with the best will in the world, you’ve had to admit that some UK festivals this year have left you less than impressed with too much of the m-word, too crowded, too many queues, too chilly, too costly, too wet, too… just too muddy, and in many cases not loud enough, musically, then… ta da… I may have the answer. New Europe.
Well they call it New Europe, but of course it's not new, it's been there all the time yet not so accessible, not marketed to us in the West till now.
Anyone who has agreed to a stag do in Prague in the Czech Republic and ended up being handcuffed, naked, to the railings of the Charles Bridge the day before his wedding day (you fool for thinking your friends wouldn’t do this to you!) can tell you that the further East you go, the cheaper the beer.
Anyone you’ve ever met from any country East of the former European Union borders will tell you that people in Eastern Europe know how to party.
I’ve DJed in Poland and Romania and hung out in other points East in the past few years, and I can testify! Where we in the UK might go slightly bonkers about a one day festival, or a excited by the idea of a get together lasting two whole days and nights…these guys call a festival a gathering that lasts for five days, or a week, a month - even three months is not all that uncommon.
That’s how long the Exit festival in Novi Sad, Serbia, lasted when it first kicked off as a freedom demonstration. They’ve got it down to a more manageable few days now, but there are people who if they have enough time on the hands are quite happy to party all summer.
I’ve been hearing for some years now, rumours of a party in Hungary that lasts for more than three weeks, and this year I finally got to play at the famed Sziget Festival in Budapest, my first visit to Hungary.
Watch a short film of Annie at Sziget Festival
It’s wicked. Budapest is beautiful, languishing between the cliff-high banks of the Danube, and looking at night, when I arrived, like Paris on the Seine, but with flood lit castles rising majestically up from each river bank.
Then you go across a fairy-lit bridge to an island in the middle of the river, a huge huge park where the festival happens. There are no less than 20 stages with all kinds of music, and you can camp in the spectacular woods all around. As the New York Times pointed out, this is not so much a festival, more like a convention of the United Nations.
I met a Cuban band on the flight out, DJed after Ludmilla, a Hungarian break beat DJ with uncannily similar taste in music as me, (big ups to her!) saw a bit of the Chemical Brothers’ dazzling light show before I warmed up for The Plump DJs, our other UK music duo export.
The Basque-Spanish superstar Manu Chao had headlined the night before, and this week long festival also welcomed Faithless, Pink, Tool, The Killers, Nine Inch Nails, GusGus, and hundreds of artists from all over the world .
Like Glastonbury there were lots of other attractions as well as the music, and I only wish I’d been there long enough to explore the whole magical site. (I was off then to play at Creamfields, Andalusia, another annual event, in Spain).
My host in Hungary was Petra, who normally works in the film industry, I had a driver called Jozef (everyone in Hungary seems to have such an exotically spelt name!) and Eva who met me at the airport is a lawyer who works in the office of the Hungarian Prime Minister. That’s how committed they are to making Sziget a success.
It’s a two hour flight from London, the beer is 80p a tin, and it didn’t rain. Fancy coming next year?
Watch a short film of Annie at Sziget Festival
