Sziget 2016

[Hefferboi]

I'm making a a few last minute buys, what should I be getting?? Clothing wise, what's needed??

[Bandar]

19 hours ago, sziget2016 said:

You don't need any special ticket for that. All stages are open for everyone Have fun!

Great thanks .

[Bandar]

And what about wifi is it free ?! And can I connect to it from main stage ?! 

[kyle82]

1 hour ago, Bandar said:

And what about wifi is it free ?! And can I connect to it from main stage ?! 

It was pretty much non-existent last year... there were certain places you could go to get wifi but they were few and far between and the connection was almost always awful... if you could manage to connect at all.  My 3G/4G wasn't working on my phone unfortunately so I had to leave the island and go to a coffee shop just so I could send an e-mail.

[neshman86]

Hello, guys

Just wanted to ask this, to see what my possibilities are, hope you are going to help me So, Sziget camp is in the festival area and if someone goes inside on the first day with day wristband, is it possible to stay all week, if that person is careful with controllers? I mean,   security check is rigorous? Did someone of you or your friends ever tried that? And also, if someone get caught, what is the worst of what may happen to that person?

Thanks in advance

Best

[HannahandGary]

I'm getting sliiightly worried about the weather forecast! I was hoping for a guaranteed sunshine festival and some forecasts are saying rain!!! :-( Was not expecting to have to pack a raincoat!

What do people wear on their feet if it rains? I'm presuming (praying!) wellies are not needed due to the already dry ground, will pumps or ankle boots suffice?

Thanks!!

Hannah

[sziget2016]

40 minutes ago, HannahandGary said:

I'm getting sliiightly worried about the weather forecast! I was hoping for a guaranteed sunshine festival and some forecasts are saying rain!!! :-( Was not expecting to have to pack a raincoat!

What do people wear on their feet if it rains? I'm presuming (praying!) wellies are not needed due to the already dry ground, will pumps or ankle boots suffice?

Thanks!!

Hannah

Its good to have wellies, because Budapest in August is very stormy. After that ther is a lot of mud and pools.

[Uncle Liam]

Can someone tell me where the Shisha tent is?

 

i stumble on it accidentally every year but can never specifically find it 

[HannahandGary]

On 8/5/2016 at 1:55 PM, sziget2016 said:

Its good to have wellies, because Budapest in August is very stormy. After that ther is a lot of mud and pools.

Thank you :-) Forcast seems to have improved so fingers crossed!!

[Deckard]

4 hours ago, HannahandGary said:

Thank you :-) Forcast seems to have improved so fingers crossed!!

This is my ninth consecutive year and I only remember about 3 or 4 days affected by heavy rain in total as the sun usually comes out and quickly dries the site up the next day. I just slip a poncho in my back pocket and wear old trainers. When they do get a thunderstorm it is pretty epic for a while though!

[jackarmy]

On 8/5/2016 at 0:48 AM, neshman86 said:

Hello, guys

Just wanted to ask this, to see what my possibilities are, hope you are going to help me So, Sziget camp is in the festival area and if someone goes inside on the first day with day wristband, is it possible to stay all week, if that person is careful with controllers? I mean,   security check is rigorous? Did someone of you or your friends ever tried that? And also, if someone get caught, what is the worst of what may happen to that person?

Thanks in advance

Best

In my experience from last year I would say that it's entirely possible to do that. Once you're in the festvival you are in, it's a pretty crazy place.

I think there are occasionally random checkpoints that security do, but those are quite rare. Definitely worth risking it IMO... The worst that would happen would be eviction from the site immediately. 

[Uncle Liam]

One year I had my wristband checked twice every day, the next year I didn't have it checked once! 

Jackarmy is entirely right though, what's the worst that can happen?

[Katechka]

A sneak peek into how Sziget looked like yesterday night. http://www.katechka.com/sneak-peek-sziget-festival-2016-two-days-to-go

[KayTay]

On 5 August 2016 at 10:30 PM, Uncle Liam said:

Can someone tell me where the Shisha tent is?

 

i stumble on it accidentally every year but can never specifically find it 

It's just past Asus Snowattack. Same side, walking towards the beach rather than the bridges. 

[KayTay]

Can anybody tell me where I can buy a sleeping bag (onsite). I'm fed up of being cold at night with only blankets. 

[Noeliam]

Well...

that was AMAZING! I took it easy for the third year at first. I did some things I've never done before (badminton, ping pong, circus, headlining performance at the world music stage (Buika was so amazing)...) I went to see my favorite bands mostly. My top 5 is- M83//Muse//Sigur Ros//Teapot Industries//Manu Chao and special thanks to Buika, Golan, Deluxe, Chems, Noel and maaaany others. 

I'll talk a bit more later, I have the Sziget cough.

[renrutbor]

My first Sziget and I absolutely loved it! Straight into my favourite 3 festivals alongside Boomtown and Glastonbury I think. So much to see and do, quite glad there wasn't that much musically I was bothered about as it allowed us to spend much more time wandering and discovering other things!

Musically my highlights were Skunk Anansie (she is such an entertainer!), Sigur Ros, Aurora and Unkle. Loved some of the street theatre and circus stuff going on and all the little things and arty details that made it such a beautiful place! The beach was a great area to chill out too. 

Only real complaint was that the lack of quality and choice of food and the inexplicable decision not to have enough (and seemingly the slowest!) people working on the festipay top up sites especially on the first couple of days when obviously everyone arriving is going to need to use them! Having to queue for about 3 hours on the first day just to be able to buy something to eat and drink definitely killed the initial excitement. 

Did anyone else notice that there was some confusion as to which were urinals and which were sinks?! The urinals next to the classical stage seemed to be used as sinks all week despite being exactly the same as the ones on the main path and by the main stage which were definitely being used as urinals. Grim!

It's so handy being close to Budapest and was great to be able to explore an amazing city too. Loved the ruin pubs and Gellert Hill and it's a great city to just wander around and see where you end up. Citypass made it so much more flexible as the public transport network was easy to use and incredibly efficient. 

Overall had an amazing time and will definitely be back, not next year though as it'll be the same week as Boomtown again sadly and we're going there for my 30th! 

[amfy]

I loved it for all the same reasons as you, and being a bit older, will probably be back there next year as I AM a bit too old for Boomtown. 

The publicity for Sziget makes it look like its full of posers, but this could not be less true. It IS full of naturally gorgeous young people, but not self conciously so - people are themselves here. They dance anywhere, to anything, with anyone. Although we are much older than most of the crowd, we felt completely accepted and at home there.

we also enjoyed exploring as the line up seemed a little weak, and this was the revelation of the festival for us. We enjoyed so much music that was new and different to what we would normally listen to, and had so much fun just letting off steam to all kinds of sounds. We spent a lot of time around the handily grouped World, Reggae, & Blues stages. There was always something on one of those 3 to keep us entertained. 

The Bohemian Betyars (Hungarian gypsy punk?) on the main stage were simply amazing. We also loved Yiddish Twist (pre-war Jewish jazz?)Soviet Suprem (French band portraying 'an alternative future where Russia won the cold war' - in what I can only describe as the style of Goldie Looking Chain!), The Malasaners (a Spanish Pogues?), Hackney Colliery Band, Pannonia All Stars Ska Orchestra, Soundbreakers (Hungarian Blues/soul) - others I couldn't even keep track of......all of them met with enthusiastic crowds.

of the bigger names, Tinie Tempah and Noel Glalagher were our surprise highlight - didn't expect that much of either but really had a fantastic time at both of these. The Chemical Brothers (we love) delivered exactly what we expected. Rhianna was our massive diappointment.

we also felt that the food was the one area where it fell short of Glastonbury, but the festival's open, international feel, and it's laid back yet up-for-anything crowd, more than made up for that.

A world party - loved it!

[renrutbor]

Have you been to Boomtown? If not it's definitely worth a go, some areas are definitely dominated by kids and crap music (the bottom of the hill, especially at night) but there's so much more chilled out hippy type stuff, blues, folk, reggae, ska, electro-swing and more older people at the top. 

Yeah, I didn't even touch on the stuff we discovered without knowing before, Dirty Harry's Dynamite and LA-33 being the highlights of them but you just know that there was so much more going on, shame you can't be in more than one place at once! Things like the museum section, TEDx tent, the tent without borders (talks on refugees, immigration etc) really added to the festival too I thought. Only regret is that we never made it into the labyrinth. 

Definitely agree on the general atmosphere and friendly feel to the place too, was very culturally diverse and nice to hear such a variety of different languages. Everyone was there to have fun and saw very few people completely out of it too.

Shamefully the few times we did see people acting like dicks they were British (or Irish) unfortunately!

[amfy]

I had actually been thinking about working Bomtown in order to justify my presence there as I really do fancy it, but now I think we will be back at Sziget next year anyway. We have trailblazer and a few of our festival friends may be trying it next year so it would be a shame not to be there with them!

The only bit of trouble I saw all weekend was after Jess Glynne when some idiot threw a plastic bottle off the back of the guy in front of him's head. A massive bloke waded in and pinned him up against the fence, so we waded in to protect the idiot because the guy who waded in was so much bigger and his reaction was so OTT. After an age, the bigger bloke identified himself as security, so we left him to deal with it. It was al a bit odd tbh!

 

 

[amfy]

We also had a mooch in some of those other areas, including the tent without borders. It felt like there weren't enough hours in the day and ithat is one of the reasons we want to go again(which is a very Glastonbury syndrome for me - the wish to keep going til I get it right!). Having sorted the geography a bit, we will be looking to locate a lot closer to the festival. We had a beautiful boat ride in every day, but we really could have done with being nearer the festival - our city days would be easer to travel further for, and our festival days would have been better nearer. Twice public transport stranded us half way home on a late night & we ended up walking 2-3 miles - you don't need that on festival feet!

On the subject of the Tent without Borders - one reggae artist - on at about 11 one night on the reggae/Latin/ African stage - had a good crowd & got everyone to move to one side of the stage & take up about a third of the space to show that when good people want to co-operate there is always enough room and you cannot say 'We are full'. It epitomised the festivals awareness of the refugee crisis and I found it really moving. 

Pit felt like the festival Glastonbury used to be in terms of its friendliness and politics, but safer and more polished. What a great place!

[seantizz]

EFestival photos from Sziget are now published... My review is nearing completion..It might not be quite as positive as some of you guys have been reporting!!!

http://www.efestivals.co.uk/festivals/sziget/2016/galleries.shtml 

[doobie ninja]

So...Second time at Sziget  done.

I would recommend this festival to people and Budapest is a great city!! all my friends and I had a great time for sure, but we all left with mixed feelings (and the normal Sziget flu!). The lineup was better for me this year. I loved The Chemical brothers, Muse, John Newman (surprisingly?!), boys Noize and Deluxe. Weather was better overall as last year I found it too hot.

But the few problems I had with the site last year, seemed worse this year. The service is poor quite often and there just seemed to be more idiots there, basically Brits, Aussies, kiwis and yanks.

Cant deny though that it is a fun festival with lots to do. If you have never been, definitely go and check it out!!

[seantizz]

Some of tho might be interested in this.. Here's my eFestivals review. It's a bit critical and a bit lengthy!! 

https://www.efestivals.co.uk/festivals/sziget/2016/review-overview.shtml

[renrutbor]

Seems like a fair review to me, definitely agree with the organisational and customer service complaints, I can't understand how they decided to only have half of the festipay windows open on the first few days when it was obvious that everyone arriving would have to queue up before they could spend any money.

The bars weren't any more efficient either, fortunately there was enough of them to go somewhere else a bit quieter whenever there was more than a couple of people waiting. We got no experience of the VIP camping but the general camping was already packed by the time we arrived on tuesday afternoon (with moving in early tickets) and I was amazed at some of the gaps people managed to (or had to!) squeeze tents into. We saw the wooden huts and did think they looked a bit flimsy and not very private with the perspex windows though. 

We always intended to go to some of the big circus/theatre shows including that soap thing but saw the queues and decided not to bother, which was a shame, they should probably have had them on more frequently or had other things going on throughout the evening. Seemed a bit of a waste to have 2 massive tents for just the same 2 shows each day pretty much but I suppose that could have been necessary for logistical reasons. 

For us though the variety of other stuff going on along with being so easy to get to Budapest will probably see us going back again at some point, would probably do things slightly differently next time though.