Thursday 11 August 2011
We awoke to a gorgeous day and the fantastic news that Nicole could get into the Sziget Festival at a discount. After catching up on e-mails, blogs and laundry Charles and Nicole left at 3 PM for the island where the music festival was happening. Dian gave a concert at the request of Paulo and Paula (the Milano neighbors) with a promise of homemade risotto and yummy orange peel dessert. At 10:30 as Dian was getting the beds ready, in walked Nicole and Charles with grins a mile wide. It turns out, Nicole was given free entrance and had seen one of her favorite groups, Kasabian.
Sziget is considered one of the best rock fests in Europe. All of Sziget Island, in the Danube in the center of Budapest, is given over to the music for eight days every summer, with almost a dozen stages, art areas, of course lots of food and beverage booths, and large areas for camping. It was a little complicated to get there from our camp, We knew what metro to take but then had to switch to two or three different trams; when we got off the metro we spotted a couple of young women in pink Sziget employee t-shirts and they gave us directions. Aha! We'd been fooled and lost that way too many times, so we decided to just follow them (at a discreet distance), until the flood of young people (not too many people Charles' age at this one) became obvious and we followed that crowd. Leaving was a different story: of course the crowd initially streamed out of one exit toward one transport point, but after that it got confusing because everyone was returning to different places. Amazingly, after an initial error, we corrected and took an alternate route and still got back perfectly. You laugh, but it's a big deal, the difference between arriving back at 10:30 happy to share our experiences, or 1:30 AM, exhausted and frustrated.
Walking across the final bridge (strewn with multi-lingual "Welcome" banners), Charles and Nicole could feel the buzz of excitement. This was a large crowd intent on having a great time, and there were plenty of opportunities for that. Nicole marched in with her "over 18" pass (for alcohol consumption), which had been pressed upon her with no questions asked. So much for that system.
Their very first impression on the grounds was not musical, but playful with some life-size Kinect game that had people jumping to exhaustion. Charles, a map nerd, wanted to study the layout first but Nicole just wanted to go, and explore. After surveying the scene and listening to a few bands, they finally found the area where their new artist buddy, ASquid NamedSebastian, from the camp in Vienna, was doing his thing in a laid back area where his traveling art collective was set up along with local and other artists. It was an interesting place to hang out and get a different experience than watching one band after another. He was kind enough to show his entire sketch book and explain all the plans he had for those many ideas, and appreciated Charles and Nicole's interest. If he can accomplish 1/10th of his ambitions, you will be hearing from him. Nearby we heard a band from Slovakia named Elvis Jackson, pretty interesting for the constant genre and language switches they made, even within each song. Impressive.
The biggest name playing was Prince, two nights before and prices almost doubled that night. That would've been a treat, but we all had seen him in LA not long before, and still remembered that amazing show well. Thursday was the best night because of Kasabian, a band Charles initially "discovered" because he received a review copy of their first album, and who became one of Nicole's favorite bands. Neither of them had seen them live, so expectations were high, and they did not disappoint.
Nicole worked her way to the front of the stage about 20 minutes before showtime, and wound up with about 20,000 fans behind her. She befriended a really nice Bulgarian guy, who confessed to not knowing Kasabian very well; by the end of the show she asked him if he was now a fan and he replied, emphatically, "Very much so!" People near the front were having a really good time, with a mosh pit going (Nicole's first), but weren't going crazy -- when a woman fell, she was immediately picked up by others. Nicole's new friend was well over six feet tall and watched out for his more diminutive buddy.
When the band played songs from a new album that had not been released yet, it seemed like everyone in the crowd knew all the words, and Charles was impressed that Hungarian hacking skills were the equal of their American counterparts but Nicole pointed out she also knew the lyrics, by looking up live versions of the songs on Youtube. Get hip, Dad, there's more than one way to skin a release date. Nicole, Charles and the Bulgarian agreed it was a tremendous performance, and Nicole could hardly wait for their new album "Veloceraptor" to be released Sept. 19. (Cough.... early birthday present.... cough....) They saw a few more bands but that was definitely the highlight. They gave Sziget Fest a hardy thumbs up.
We awoke to a gorgeous day and the fantastic news that Nicole could get into the Sziget Festival at a discount. After catching up on e-mails, blogs and laundry Charles and Nicole left at 3 PM for the island where the music festival was happening. Dian gave a concert at the request of Paulo and Paula (the Milano neighbors) with a promise of homemade risotto and yummy orange peel dessert. At 10:30 as Dian was getting the beds ready, in walked Nicole and Charles with grins a mile wide. It turns out, Nicole was given free entrance and had seen one of her favorite groups, Kasabian.
Sziget is considered one of the best rock fests in Europe. All of Sziget Island, in the Danube in the center of Budapest, is given over to the music for eight days every summer, with almost a dozen stages, art areas, of course lots of food and beverage booths, and large areas for camping. It was a little complicated to get there from our camp, We knew what metro to take but then had to switch to two or three different trams; when we got off the metro we spotted a couple of young women in pink Sziget employee t-shirts and they gave us directions. Aha! We'd been fooled and lost that way too many times, so we decided to just follow them (at a discreet distance), until the flood of young people (not too many people Charles' age at this one) became obvious and we followed that crowd. Leaving was a different story: of course the crowd initially streamed out of one exit toward one transport point, but after that it got confusing because everyone was returning to different places. Amazingly, after an initial error, we corrected and took an alternate route and still got back perfectly. You laugh, but it's a big deal, the difference between arriving back at 10:30 happy to share our experiences, or 1:30 AM, exhausted and frustrated.
Walking across the final bridge (strewn with multi-lingual "Welcome" banners), Charles and Nicole could feel the buzz of excitement. This was a large crowd intent on having a great time, and there were plenty of opportunities for that. Nicole marched in with her "over 18" pass (for alcohol consumption), which had been pressed upon her with no questions asked. So much for that system.
Their very first impression on the grounds was not musical, but playful with some life-size Kinect game that had people jumping to exhaustion. Charles, a map nerd, wanted to study the layout first but Nicole just wanted to go, and explore. After surveying the scene and listening to a few bands, they finally found the area where their new artist buddy, ASquid NamedSebastian, from the camp in Vienna, was doing his thing in a laid back area where his traveling art collective was set up along with local and other artists. It was an interesting place to hang out and get a different experience than watching one band after another. He was kind enough to show his entire sketch book and explain all the plans he had for those many ideas, and appreciated Charles and Nicole's interest. If he can accomplish 1/10th of his ambitions, you will be hearing from him. Nearby we heard a band from Slovakia named Elvis Jackson, pretty interesting for the constant genre and language switches they made, even within each song. Impressive.
 |
| Nicole eating one of the GIANT hamburgers being sold at the fest. |
The biggest name playing was Prince, two nights before and prices almost doubled that night. That would've been a treat, but we all had seen him in LA not long before, and still remembered that amazing show well. Thursday was the best night because of Kasabian, a band Charles initially "discovered" because he received a review copy of their first album, and who became one of Nicole's favorite bands. Neither of them had seen them live, so expectations were high, and they did not disappoint.
Nicole worked her way to the front of the stage about 20 minutes before showtime, and wound up with about 20,000 fans behind her. She befriended a really nice Bulgarian guy, who confessed to not knowing Kasabian very well; by the end of the show she asked him if he was now a fan and he replied, emphatically, "Very much so!" People near the front were having a really good time, with a mosh pit going (Nicole's first), but weren't going crazy -- when a woman fell, she was immediately picked up by others. Nicole's new friend was well over six feet tall and watched out for his more diminutive buddy.
When the band played songs from a new album that had not been released yet, it seemed like everyone in the crowd knew all the words, and Charles was impressed that Hungarian hacking skills were the equal of their American counterparts but Nicole pointed out she also knew the lyrics, by looking up live versions of the songs on Youtube. Get hip, Dad, there's more than one way to skin a release date. Nicole, Charles and the Bulgarian agreed it was a tremendous performance, and Nicole could hardly wait for their new album "Veloceraptor" to be released Sept. 19. (Cough.... early birthday present.... cough....) They saw a few more bands but that was definitely the highlight. They gave Sziget Fest a hardy thumbs up.
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