So what is this Sziget thing anyway?

22 July 2010 Joe Innes

Sziget 2009, thanks to Balázs Glódi

Szi­get 2009, thanks to Balázs Glódi

Click here to hear some of the main reas­ons we’re excited about Szi­get — a first for JBT — an art­icle with a soundtrack!

Szi­get is a music fest­ival held annu­ally in Bud­apest, Hun­gary. Szi­get lit­er­ally means island (and is pro­nounce “see-get”), and it’s called that because it’s held on an island in the middle of the Danube. Its first incarn­a­tion was as a mainly student-run fest­ival in 1993, and the second, in 1994, was a Wood­stock re-union fest­ival in Europe. Dur­ing the four years since its incep­tion, they must have done some­thing right, because the fest­ival was atten­ded by a quarter of a mil­lion people in 1997. The attend­ance in 1997 was enough to finally recoup the losses made by the first fest­ival in 1993, which were huge. The sup­port of Pepsi between 1996 and 2001 was use­ful fin­an­cially, and in terms of advertising.

Des­pite the huge attend­ance, and pub­li­city work done at the begin­ning of the dec­ade in con­junc­tion with Pepsi, the fest­ival is still rel­at­ively unheard of within the UK. Approx­im­ately 50% of the people attend­ing are Hun­garian, and the second largest group are the French. As time has gone on, how­ever, the num­ber of West­ern Europeans attend­ing has grown, partly for fin­an­cial reas­ons. This year’s fest­ival is excep­tion­ally expens­ive, cost­ing 179€ (c. £150) for a full week with camp­ing. To an aver­age West­ern European, this rep­res­ents approx­im­ately two days work, whereas to an aver­age Hun­garian, it rep­res­ents just over two weeks. There are cheaper tick­ets for those who live in Bud­apest and do not camp, however.

Szi­get prides itself on being an inter­na­tional fest­ival, and this is reflec­ted in the range of artists that per­form, from all over the world. And the fest­ival is not just music either, all sorts of cul­tural events will be tak­ing place, includ­ing poker games, theatre, amongst a whole host of others.

Bud­apest (pro­nounced Bud­apesht, in the local ver­nacu­lar) is an excit­ing, bust­ling city, and from what I’ve heard, never more so than dur­ing the week or so of Sziget.

Find out more about the fest­ival (and buy your tick­ets!) here, and visit skyscanner.org to find flights (note: I don’t have any con­nec­tion to sky­scan­ner other than hav­ing used it myself. I bought my tick­ets through WizzAir, who seemed to be doing a pretty good deal from Lon­don Luton, but other budget flights are avail­able from RyanAir, easyJet and Jet2).

Leave your response!

Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site. You can also subscribe to these comments via RSS.

Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

This is a Gravatar-enabled weblog. To get your own globally-recognized-avatar, please register at Gravatar.