Sziget Fesztival in Budapest

European’s biggest Open Air Festival had it’s last day on wednesday. I spent 2 days at the festival, which is European's biggest open Air festival and truly an awesome cultural event to witness.

Budapest’s Sziget Fesztival or “Island Festival” in English has been held the first time 12 years back, back then under a different name and just in a small scale. By now it became a huge event with almost half a million visitors from all over Europe, which is more than just a typical open Air Festival with lots of different stages and some sort of markets and snack bars.

Luis René who accompanied me and read the entire Sziget information booklet explained it as an enormous ambition to make the guests feel as comfortable and entertained as possible. This ambition is supported by various sponsors without any support by the gorverment or by the city. A huge cultural event which offers an incredible diverse program.Besides all the different music stages and DJ tents one could find any cultural media or entertainment possible: theatre plays, dance, visual experiments, exhibitions etc.

One time we even passed by the AIESEC tent of the Sziget and after asking them what AIESEC is about, they were incredibly troubled to explain. He referred us to come the next day when they would perform some AIESEC dances, "some idiotic dances where everyone knows how to dance when specific songs are playing" as he called it. Hmm.

Sitting in a wonderfule big garden with big cushions and some fireplaces, smoking some apple shisha and listening to the rhythmic drums of a group from Senegal at the world stage right next, while the sun set and the darkness slowly broke down - was only one of the highlights
The Musical highlights were Baaba Maal (Senegal), Anima Sound System(Hungary), The Wailers, and DJ Cyborg Templar.

Budapest of a different kind

Kiraly Ut, 1068 Budapest - where I live ;)

Now that I spent almost the last 2 weeks without any internet access it really got me again and after some struggles I finally found an internet café. It's incredible how many people and elders are using the internet now as it has been always exisitng. Even my Hungarian grandparents who are about 80 by now and live in an old and small village out of town are chatting with their family in msn ;).

Considering the high expectations of everyone to be online accessible - e.g. my father is regularly missing out information about the next Ice Hockey training or game, because he is one of the few without any computer nor Internet in the house - it still took me a while to find a hot spot café in the city.

Now I am sitting in a nice old factory building which was refunctioned and modernized to a sort of exhibition hall, theater and café with internet access. In fact I could even sit outside in the modern arranged park and watch the water fountains or visitors who are passing by on their way to the huge Shopping Mall, which even carries the name Mammuth.
Budapest really changed. I hope they also start reconstructing and restaurating the beautiful old parts of town, which beauty is covered by grey street dust that makes most of the old streets and architecture look sad and burdensome.

The last week I spent a wonderful relaxing weekend in Kisgörbö a small village of app. 5 to 10 houses and incredible Nature around it. There was a family event which united all the extended family members on my grandmothers side. Lots of stories were told and even though(, or maybe because of it) I never had a big family life or gathering in the past I really enjoyed listenig to all their different lifes and common history, which could have served to produce good material for a film version. As a conclusion I will download a family tree program and complete my research.

Besides I sort of stayed away from any sort of media to flood me with lots of unuseful information but took some time to study Hungarian and read a great book, which I can highly recommend to all the ones interested in Eastern Philosophy which relates to relatively recent insights in modern Physics. It's called Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra.

Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke

Fear of the Inexplicable

But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverishedthe existence of the individual; the relationship between one human being and another has also been cramped by it, as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alonethat is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope.

But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence. For if we think of this existence ofthe individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, aplace by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeonsand not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode.

We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set aboutus, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us.We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry,scarcely to bedistinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason tomistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abuses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels usthat we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trustand find most faithful. How should we be able to forget thoseancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesseswho are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Budapest - great recreation awaiting

budapest_1_big
Originally uploaded by monokita.

From thursday morning onwards I will be spending a great amount of holidays in Budapest and at the Balaton with almost no Internet access, but loads of sun, great hungarian food, family events, birthday celebration, concerts and lots of readings.

Did you know that ...

- In1996 Hungary celebrated its 1100 anniversary of statehood?

-The story of the multiple Oscar-winner film, The English Patient, is actually based on the life of László Almásy, a Hungarian explorer and traveler

- The famous Rubik cube which probably already truobled all of us one point of time is made by Ernő Rubik, a Hungarian architect who invented the cube and launched it 1977 in Hungary (by the way also the year of my birth)

More Information on Budapest