debriefing:
we came off the plane and met some dutch who we shared a taxi with and they took us to where they were pitching their tent. day -1 and already it was packed out. we got set up and went to get drunk.
day 0, so fucking hot. we got up went for a drink and some shade. that was pretty much our routine.
we were next to the world stage and until midnight every night you got folk/ska/reggae/whatever style music. stages at this festival are crazy loud compared to festivals in the uk. then, the bar dj kicked in until 5am. if you needed sleep, you'd find a way. we spent a lot of time in the bar near our tent - french bar? dunno, we were surrounded by dutch with the odd canadian or french. new people turned up all week.
didn't get to see everyone i wanted to as we tended to have an afternoon siesta and didn't always wake up in time.
interesting food. . . meats a bit shit. we ended up living off the hotdogs just down from our tent. the toppings offered: cucumber, cabbage, fried onions (dried and finely chopped), jalapenos, ketchup, mustard, bbq sauce. bizarre.
we arrived on the monday, on i think, wed morn i woke about 5am and someone was at the entrance to our tent. so i shouted and they took off. i asked Mr P where my ipod was as he'd fallen asleep listening to it - gone. I looked outside the tent and was confused to see my car key, freaked out and looked for my bag that had been by our heads. It was closer to the door. My phone was gone and when i opened my wallet so was 1 days worth of cash (but this was our third day so no real harm), my bank card, 50 euros for our return stop to frankfurt and a tenner for our bus from the airport. gutted. someone had unzipped our tent while we slept reached over our heads, lifted our my bag, taken out my phone, emptied my wallet and put everything back, put the bag back and i was woken by them rezipping the tent. WHY PUT IT BACK?!!
anyway, got word home to get card and phone cancelled. sorted. i had the majority of my money in a seperate pocket that they didnt check. they got like 15 quid and cause they didn't check properly missed out on about 370. mwah ha!!! the dutch people behind us got robbed 4 times during the week, to the extent of having their tent slashed with a knife and rifled through.
had a sweet week of music, random banter, drinking and resembling a tramp. there was a huge storm on the friday. it kicked up out of the blue, with loads of lightning and torential rain.
on monday we got up at about 6, packed up and left the tent as it was soaking wet. said bye to the dutch and headed off. we walked for about 4 hours or so - hardcore. got to our apartment agent and was stoked that our apartment was above the forbidden planet style shop we'd seen. kickass. we got the code for the secure entry and settled in to our one room abode. nice wee balcony, little kitchen and. . . hungarian tv. we went to a little supermarket and got a load of supplies. ate, chilled out and drifted off, as we had tuesday and then were flying home wed morning. Mr P woke me up about half one saying he thought we'd been robbed again. my bag was gone. while we slept, someone crept 9 feet into our room and lifted my bag off of the table that was about one foot from where we were sleeping.
passports, our last 40 000 forint = approx £120, my car key. after that i slept with my cash in my bra for the rest of the festival.
so it was off the the incredibly rude and unhelpful embassy. then to the police station - the only place in hungary where no one speaks english- then off to the metro for passport photos and finally find a hotel as we'd managed to sort out some cash. we got our emergency passports the next day, checked out some shops bought some provisions and got drunk whilst watching 8mm in hungarian. we got up the next day to get our airport taxi at 6.30am got to airport as we'd had to change our flights from wed morn to thurs morn, chilled out. we went to go to our gate half an hour before our flight but no one was allowed through. we were told nothing and at 15 mins before our flight was due to leave we were freaking out, we were only getting 40 mins between flights if we were on time. then they let everyone through, at once, chaos. we got on the plain and the stewardess said we weren't delayed. the pilot came on the pa and said we'd be waiting 10 or 15 mins as some passengers were held up, but frankfurt knew so it was all good. got to frankfurt ten mins late and were made to queue with everyone in the handluggage and passanger check. some of our fellow passengers were fast tracked through business class checks for unknown reasons, but we were told to wait. we spoke to any official we saw trying to see if we could get through quicker, but it took 25 mins. we then had passport checks. this took 5. we ran to the gate but our plane was taxing. so we had to wait in frankfurt for 4 hours with no cash, because lufthansa held our first plane for passengers but not our second plane for us.
30 hours later than expected, but home.
budapest is scorching in august you totally need air con. amazing architecture everywhere you look and a really weird mix of shops - like furla and c&a next to each other. it is so cheap, crazy cheap. would be good for drinking and checking out music, maybe even xmas shopping. gutted i lost my phone because i would have taken so many photos. walked for miles though so i'm quite handy in budapest now and have sweated off about 3 pounds. i would definately recommend budapest, but where i was looking for pickpockets and rip off merchants, it's actually ninja gypsy fucks that you need to be combating. afterwards was told my sister couldn't even view budapest airport website from her work (prosecution/crown) because our goverment doesn't like budapest for some reason, views them as dodgy. there was loads of people robbed, according to our embassy the dutch had it really bad this year, apparently. but we met so many people that regardless of measures like hiding money under carpets lost a lot of cash, one from an apartment while they were out. at the embassy/police staion there was loads of stolen passports. i would do sziget again, it was awesome and would be pretty sweet with a big group of people.
but yessum, an adventure.
