Hungary

The first thing you need to know about Hungary is that they have the most beautiful building in Europe (The Budapest House of Parliament).  The second is that they have a note in forints that is worth 73 Euros and is a real pain in the arse to change lol.  We were here for Sziget festival, but also to look around the country as I had been here before and really liked it.

Szeged:  End of the train line and a pretty little town, but as every Hungarian town seems to have this Austro-Hungarian empire architecture, there is nothing to mark this town out.

Pecs:  We had the most amazing duck dinner in Pecs in a restaurant from the LP.  It's a restaurant that specialises in duck.  You should definitely go as it's amazing stuff.  The town is pleasant to walk around but there is not much to do.  We found ourselves a little bored outside of Budapest.

Lake Balaton:  Wow this place is so overprices and so overrated though we were in Siofok.  It just seems like a holiday resort for Germans where you are even charged to go to the lake side 'beaches'.  The place we stayed in was run by a Hungarian couple but they spoke only German so I had to stretch my German.  I could understand what they were saying, but my German was too rusty to speak or order anything.  Everywhere is privately owned and charges a lot.  The only public part of the lake you can't swim in and they have police to patrol it and also to stop you from sleeping on the grass.  Its a resort place with all the unpleasantness that involves.  Eventually we took a train to Budapest, underwhelmed by a country we had been really excited to visit.

Kekskemet:  We took the train down to see the famous horse riding performers.  You need to stay down here as its impossible to get there early enough to see the show or at least it was because we missed the point to jump off.  We met an English couple and went with them for the day and didn't have to pay as we had missed the start of the show.  We walked down the track and saw the last 20 minutes or so for free.  Its an impressive show and its worth the trip if you have a day or two to kill or want to get outside of the city,

Budapest/Sziget:  Ah thank God for Budapest.  I love this city.  We were in Sziget for 7 nights and it was going to be a good festival.  We pitched our tent next to the 'Peace and Love' tent which was a serious mistake because they were playing ear breaking music until about 5am.  I think both my ear drums were blown from the battering they took in the festival.  We should have pitched it near the blues tent.  Mattheus was coming to Budapest so we would meet up with him, while Peter was heading to Prague so we were likely yo see him there.  This was the halfway point of our trip.  We decided to visit the city over the first two days then afterwards mix up the spas and the festival.  They were doing 2 day passes for 8 euros with unlimited spa use and transport in Budapest, which was great as its normally 16 euros just to enter one spa.  We took two of them and never had to use the showers at the festival as we just went to the spa every day.

We saw Prince when we got back on the first night which was really good, apart from him putting most of his famous songs in a medley (shame), expecting the crowd to know all his songs (its a festival not an individual gig) and his 5 million encores (got tiring after the second one).  The next day we went to visit the city.  We went to the spa with the wave machine.  Really stunning.  Citadella now costs some money but we visited the old town and fort area.  Still very beautiful.  We went through Buda castle and to see the stunning Houses of Parliament.  This city straddling the Danube is a beautiful place and might be my favourite city in Eastern Europe.  'El Crapo' (our tent) broke completely so we had to prop him up with bags so he could last the festival.  This was going to be the end of his trip though.  In the afternoon we saw Broken Beats, Rise Against, Ojos de Brujo, Ana Moura and Pulp.  Most were underwhelming but Pulp are amazing live and Cannelle loved the show.  Jarvis has great crowd interaction.

The next day we went to see Parliament and the cathedral as well as Attila the Hun park.  I got a job in Paris which would sort me out when I arrived there.  The Shezegi baths were full so we went to one of the smaller ones and realised we would have to come back another day to see them.  We saw Kasabian and Chemical Brothers which were both really good and then went clubbing in the Medusa tent until around 4am.  Was nice to party in the middle of the festival as we weren't planning on going anywhere the next day.  Mattheus came in but we missed him.  He slept on the banks somewhere and got kicked out.  We met him outside the next day to have a quick catch up.

Cannelle got a nose bleed the next day as she was having problems with a nasty cold.  We went to see Skunk Anansie, Dizzee Rascal and the Prodigy.  They were fun bands though Cannelle didn't like the Prodigy that much. After we went out in the blues bar for a an hour or so and came back to find weird cigarette burns on El Crapo.

The next day we went early enough to finally get to Shezenji Baths.  I got water trapped in my ear which may also be the reason my ear drums got burst.  We went to the world's largest laundry and were late getting back to the festival.  We saw Kate Nash who got a proposal from some random dude who was crowd surfed up to her on the stage.  We watched a little bit of 30 seconds to mars and baraka sound systema which was a little like notting hill carnival, but we mainly just wandered around the festival.  We found some naked people, girls in balls and chilling out with the fire people.  Can't say I know exactly what I am talking about here lol.

We went back to the Gellert Spa for the final day, which is probably the best of them.  We got 4 amazing cakes for around 10 euros.  We found out they do the boat trip up the Danube towards Slovakia on every day except Mondays when we would be leaving the festival.  Shit.  Bad luck.  We hung around the Hungarian village and got some goulash.  The final day was a great line up as we saw Gogol Bordello, The National, Marina and the Diamonds and Selah Sue.  All the Dutch headed to Trentemoller to finish the festival and carried tents, bits of trees and whatever wasn't pinned down until the security guards gave them a battering.  Was a fun and chaotic end to the festival.  In the morning we killed 'El Crapo' and left the city.  We decided to head up the Danube but by train to the border town. Esztergom Basilica is nice and then we walked across the border into Slovakia.