Igen, igen, igen, the Sziget Festival is just around the corner, prepared to crown the joyous Hungarian summer festival season. It’s time to get ready to dive head-first into an ocean of big gigs, theater performances and other artsy affairs and to hit it off with smiling happy foreigners and Magyars. We’re not gonna lie, we at FUNZINE are counting down the days like kids before Christmas, so we decided to collect some pretty classic festival moments in the meantime, shared by the FUNZINE team and our festival-head friends. See you at Sziget!
Health Matters
Pain in Vain
“We were getting into the Woodstock-esque hippie groove of the now (temporarily?) defunct Valley of the Arts festival in Kapolcs a few years ago, and we wandered into an old farmhouse with tie-dyed curtains and futons everywhere. I decided to try some funky kind of hot glass globe massage. The “masseur” pressed what looked like glass tealight holders all over my back, and they were HOT. I endured it, thinking my tired muscles might eventually enjoy it, but ended up with huge red welts all over my back, and he said, “Now doesn’t that feel good? Oh, and by the way, don’t expose your back to sunlight for six weeks.” This was mid-July. I was confined to baggy t-shirts for the rest of the summer, and you know how hot it gets in Hungary.”
Mental Dental
“It was a sleepy summery morning at the Sziget Festival, when I decided to go for a stroll. With everyone snoring in their tents, to see a huge German guy’s rise-and-shine hygiene exercise – he was brushing his teeth next to his tent with all his strength – was quite, erm, surreal. But that’s not all… I was on the point of being moved to tears over how much he cares about his personal hygiene even at a festival when – after a good three-minutes’ brushing – he raised his plastic beer glass (most likely from the previous night’s booze-up) and rinsed his mouth with the bevy of the night before. Well, that was the moment it ceased to be surreal… after all, we were at Sziget!”
Just Like Your Mom
“One of my most delightful festival moments happened to me on a hangover-filled, rainy, gloomy (and utterly unsuitable-for-festivaling) morning. After a wild rave and an even wilder thunderstorm, the whole festival was sinking in mud, depression and worst of all, constant sneezing. Then suddenly, out of the grayish crowd appeared a guy, barefoot but with a huge smile on his face, who gave a Vitamin C pill to each and every one of us! Was it just a placebo, I don’t know, but I saw the whole crowd start buzzing again…”
Tipsy turvy
It’s a Kind of Magic
“This one happened at my first ever festival – Glastonbury. It was the first night, and we’d discovered some strange kind of hot guarana drink before heading to a tent to catch an act. On the way there, we were distracted by an old man with a long white beard and a large suitcase. He’d attracted quite a crowd, and as we neared, he pulled out a perfect little white rabbit. What followed was a crowd of happied-up festivalers caressing and passing around the rabbit, declaring their undying love for it (me included). On the last day, I spotted the suitcase in a ditch… the rabbit was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t imagine it, I swear!”
Bride and Prejudice
“Me and my mate were sipping our drinks in a bar at the Sziget Festival, when I realized I had left something in my tent. Convinced that nothing could happen to him over a span of merely ten minutes, I left my friend there and headed to my tent. Needless to say, I was totally in error. When I got back, I found him dressed in a long, bright white wedding gown, bridal veil and all the necessary accessories… in exactly the same spot, beer in hand.”
The Last Straw
“Thirsty (and greedy) as we were, we bought a whole pitcher of Mojito with my best friend at a festival to raise our spirits. We were busy dancing our flip-flops off, with the pitcher in my hand, when I noticed our ginormous drink was dwindling like heck, although we’d barely touched it. The guy behind me had got hold of one of our straws and drank the whole lot!”
LOOnatic!
The First Flush of Freedom
“Innocent and uninitiated, at my first-ever Sziget Festival, I spent thirty whole minutes trying to figure out how on earth to flush a Toi Toi…”
Sleeping Beauty
“It was the second night of the VOLT Festival in Sopron this summer, and everything had been fairly intense. After missing every single act I’d been remotely interested in, getting held up, barefoot in a random dance tent, somehow getting hold of a film crew’s video camera and some kind of wearable animal skin for a while and falling asleep on the roof of one of the pálinka houses (a story in itself), my friends decided it was time for me to head home – not before a trip to a Toi Toi (portaloo), though. I’ve no idea how long I was asleep in there, but it was nearly light when I came out.”
Crisis Management
“It happened in Tokaj, one starry night, after having toured virtually all the cellars etched in the hillside and with galaxies slowly spinning around above our head (for some obscure reason). At the campsite where we were staying, someone got stuck in the bathroom without a sheet of bog roll… There was a cloth curtain covering the bathroom door with all these nice big flowers on it – and one of us had a pocket knife. So we sliced it up and handed a bunch to the guy in trouble. The next day, when we got up at around eleven, we went to brush our teeth and the bathroom curtain with the big flowers had two massive holes running from the bottom to its middle – we could hardly walk from laughing all day after that. Oh well, necessity knows no law, right? Then I became a banker.”