What you Szi is what you get

"What you Szi is what you get" - So says the 2011 promo sticker of Sziget Festival, one of the largest music festivals in Europe. At Sziget, music is only half of what you pay for, and the other half, that 'feeling' is really hard to describe or replicate, and the organisers are well aware of this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ25EpPkRjM]. A certain cordial friendliness is radiated by absolutely everyone – the Dutch, the Germans, the French, the Irish, the Hungarians, and the few others from another 57 nations – who forget about all boundaries that would otherwise separate them in their real lives. This may all sound very hippy, but apart from the barefooted ladies and numerous 'chill bars' where hookah is served, the McDonald's, the bar-in-the-sky crane, and Vodafone's jumbotron Space Invaders-esque videogame all reassure us of the immense amount of commercial activity making this island just 20 minutes drive away from Budapest's city center a modern day festival for urbanites. So that's the setting – and now to music.

Much of the foreign press missed Day 0 of the event, but locals clearly knew it offered one of the most attractive and, in retrospect, most successful concerts – Prince. A crowd of 45,000 attended the two and a half hour show despite the late July announcement of his highness' appearance and Hungary's current poor economic situation. For days, my Facebook stream of Hungarian friends echoed 'Purple Rain' in status messages and YouTube links.

The first official day of the festival started out with The Maccabees warming up the main stage for Flogging Molly, Rise Against, Interpol, and the 90's pop-rock legend, Pulp.

Not a bad start, you say? Wait, there are more venues to go: on the same day, Hurts played in the A38-WAN2 tent, Motorhead took over the Rock-Metal stage, and Empire Of The Sun performed a set in the Burn Party Arena. If you arrived with a large group of friends with a diverse taste in music, by the end of the day you've already split up four ways and gotten lost for the rest of the week only to bump into each other at one of the few shower containers on the last day of Sziget.

If you managed to keep yourself from waking up married (relax, it only lasts until the end of Sziget), still hanging from the bungee crane, or posing in whatever-is-not-yet-outdated position on a bar's roof – don't worry, there are plenty more opportunities to end up looking silly and feeling good about it.

The second day starts up with some surprisingly exciting French soul music sung by Ben l'Oncle Soul, already getting the crowd to go "tuuu tu tuu tuu tu tuuu tu" to his cover of 'Seven Nation Army' at 4 in the afternoon (which, by the way, is such a common performance by the audience at Hungarian festivals I'm starting to think it's a legal requirement). The La Roux concert that followed unfortunately suffered a lot from the lack of treble in the Main Stage's sound system, and failed to deliver as good of an experience as we've hoped for, but it was more than made up for by the Good Charlotte, and Kasabian gigs which followed.

By the way, Kasabian's Tom Meighan seemed to have returned to Sziget a year after their first appearance with a black eye, his performance seemed a bit low on power as well, and I suspect there is some sort of connection between the two. Oh well, no big deal, The Chemical Brothers, are up next. But wait, what's with the other stages? Oh, it's justCrystal Castles, Hudson Mohawke, and Judas Priest playing – all of which we listened to a bit in passing as we strolled through the island's paved streets lined with vintage shops and blood-donation stations.

By the third day (which happened to be a Friday), I arrived back on the island after a day in the city to Dizzee Rascal's fairly monotone concert, which seemed to attract a lot of the Irish audience.

The wildly popular Peter, Bjorn and John seemed really excited to perform for an audience who spilled over to well beyond the confines of the giant A38-WAN2 tent, and even taught the crowd a few songs other than 'Young Folks'.

At the press tent, I bumped into a few old acquaintances who apparently lived in London's East-End now and wanted to meet Dizzee so desperately that they stayed there until the end of The Prodigy. That was a shame for them, because even for the 4th time at Sziget, The Prodigy managed to get every single person in the crowd jumping and screaming 'Smack My Bitch Up'.

Unfortunately, as we were stuck in The Prodigy crowd between a small group of 22 year old Hungarians who said they "grew up on this" and a heavily intoxicated crowd of Dutch girls twitching around violently to 'Out of Space', we didn't make it to Oi Va Voi, but I heard they were 'absolutely beautiful'.

The next day, a queue at the VIP / press entrance gave us a warm reminder that it was now the weekend, and many hard-working Hungarians are just about to come and see Kate Nash, Kaiser Chiefs, and Thirty Seconds To Mars. The first was not bad. The second saw an absolutely exhausting performance on Ricky Wilson's part, true to his style, and unlike three years ago he correctly greeted Budapest, not Bucharest. Thirty Seconds To Mars came with all the pizzazz we've come to expect from them, with big red balloons rolling through the audience, confetti cannons, and Jared Leto inviting at least half a hundred teenage girls up on stage – but for those who attended last year too, it was all too much of a déjà vu.

And that leads us to yet another year's Sziget finale. The National performed 16 of their best songs impeccably, with 'Start A War', 'All The Wine', and perhaps 'England' sounding the way they were always meant to. Marina and the Diamonds gave yet another great concert in the A38-WAN2 tent, which by now has proven itself to be one of the best venues to visit. Kid Cudi, and Steve Angello pumped the right tunes in Burn Party Arena, and it wasn't only 'Day 'n' Nite' and 'Show Me Love' that got the masses going either. Finally, White Lies bade 'Farewell To The Fairground' as the festival's final Main Stage performance – and just another few hours later, everything was gone.

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