Sziget Festival | Digital Nomad Family

Sziget Festival | Part 1

Sziget Festival will always be a special for one, and I hope you enjoy this post.

Strap yourselves in, because this could be a long one.

So I know this is probably a bit of late edition to the blog, however, I thought that maybe it could inspire you for this summer – or maybe next summer.

Either way, this was an experience I couldn’t not share.

Sziget Festival 2018

If you’ve not heard of Sziget Festival, then you need to start researching it & looking at it now. (After you’ve finished reading this blog post of course :))

But you need to look for all the information, anywhere and everywhere you can find it.

If you have heard of it, then you will know exactly what I’m talking about.

If you’ve been, then you’ll be just as excited as I am just writing this post. And probably also feeling the overwhelming sense of FOMO.

Sziget is week long festival on an island in the middle of Budapest, Hungary. (Sounds pretty epic right? Yeah, it is)

I’d never heard of it before, found it on the whim on Instagram and after convincing my friend to come with me, in about an hour I had my tickets booked.

I had absolutely no idea what to expect, but any expectations I had were blown out of the water.

The whole festival is ultimate positive vibe, not only is it a music festival, it’s an everything festival promoting the ‘love revolution’ on the ‘Island of Freedom’.

The headliners for 2018 included Arctic Monkeys, Dua Lipa, Gorillaz, Kendrick Lamar, Kygo, Mumford & Sons (I’m warning you know that I will be gushing about Mumford a lot very shortly) and Shawn Mendes.

This is only the beginning of the acts – there was loads, and I mean loads. All genres were covered so you can guarantee there’s something for everyone.

Along with all these acts there’s tribute acts (some of my personal highlights), along with a ridiculous amount of other entertainment possibilities.

Due to the fact I’ve already rambled a lot, I’m going to (attempt) to break down the experience day by day, hopefully throwing in some handy tips for you guys!

Day 1:
Due to flight costs/timings etc, we actually ended up flying in the evening of Day 1.

Sziget is amazing with the options it provides you for camping and organising your experience, so amazing that my friend and I were able to get a pre-pitched tent that saved us trying to fly with one and took away the stress of setting one up in the pitch black.

This meant we were able to run to the main stage and still see Kendrick Lamar perform that night, although it was a very short set.

The rest of the night we gandered around the festival to see what was what and were overwhelmed with the choice.

Day 2:
Perhaps one of my favourite things about festivals is finding new music & artists and often rekindling a live for a band you haven’t listened to in awhile.

I would say that’s a pretty accurate description of this day.

We had a pretty chilled start, had a roam around the festival to get bearings had some juices and croissants and even ventured to the Sziget beach.

As we wandered towards the stages for the acts, in the corner of my eye I spotted Seasick Steve (who I had previously seen at Boardmasters in 2015, and had a hell of a time watching) and I just couldn’t resist a picture. It was a great time, he’s a pretty cool guy.

We caught Bonobo’s set which was pretty fantastic, I hadn’t necessarily listened to it before but, like I said, that’s why festivals are so great – you find music you otherwise wouldn’t stumble across.

The headliners were the Gorillaz – one of those bands I’d forgotten I loved.

And they were insane, absolutely epic.

(There’s probably a theme running here)

I’ve since been reminiscing with their old music and new music too.

Of course, Seasick Steve was performing too so I had to go and say hello to my old friend.

Day 3:

At this point we’d settled on a bit of a routine, waking up in our sauna of a tent, go for a stroll, get a juice (sounds highly unnecessary, but they are a blessing in disguise at a festival) maybe some breakfast depending on what’s taking our fancy, normally a chill on the beach.

Basically the days we didn’t necessarily take full advantage of in terms of activities because it was SO HOT. It was about 35 degrees Celsius everyday and as Brits that was a lot to handle.

The Kooks were really the stars of this day.

Perfect band for a festival and just an all round good time.

They were pretty early on in the day so we had a lot of the evening to, again, just wander around and see what’s what.

There’s a couple old small stages with some smaller bands on that were great so I would definitely recommend heading to those smaller ones too because they’re always a good time.

Day 4:

If I had to pick a favourite day, this was it.

We had a decent chunk of time before headliners so decided to go into actual Budapest.

With our travel tickets we bought we got free entry into any of the city’s thermal baths – turns out there’s a lot.

We ended up going for the iconic ones that almost everyone goes to, it took us awhile to find our way outside to them – after all I can’t speak/read Hungarian. But this is 100% something I would recommend doing, I don’t however recommend creating a whirlpool in one of the areas (I somehow managed to have a good 20-30 people joining in with me and definitely got some funny looks from people working there).

ANYWAY, back to The Island of Freedom we went.

First up was Bastille who always put on a great show. I had seen them as well at Boardmasters in 2015 and was very excited at the opportunity to see them this time round (not as excited as my friend, but still excited).

The tables turned though when Mumford & Sons came on and I was pretty overwhelmed with excitement, in fact I think I may have cried haha.
I could probably write a whole blog post on witnessing Mumford & Sons performing but I am aware that this is probably not of interest to all of you.

They are possibly one of the ultimate festival bands, and being in one of their crowds it’s quite literally just one big, sensational party.
So go see them if you haven’t, and you’ll understand.

(Slight downside is that whenever I listen to them now I get major FOMO, not great but something I am more than happy to live with)

If you would like to continue discussing Mumford & Sons, or just have some queries or questions for myself or any of the rest of DNF then please do not hesitate to get in touch with us! We love hearing your stories!

For now, I am going to leave you here with some images from the first 4 days that you can enjoy. In leaving you on this cliffhanger I am hoping that you will all return to our blog on Friday to carry on reading about my adventures at Sziget Festival and in Budapest.

Be sure to check out our ‘Budapest’ highlight on Instagram for some highlights, funnily enough, of the trip.

So, I’ll see you on Friday at 5pm (UK time) – have a good one!