Sziget 2025

A very good friend of mine, Tomas asked me if I would go with him to a festival, because he wanted to see a band called Empire of the Sun.

There were 2 options on the table, but the decision was always clear.

In the afternoon on 6th of August, I picked up Tomas in his birth town, Sturovo. It was not a long drive then till we reached the chosen garage in Budapest. Finding the right spot for tent was not that easy, but somehow, we ended aside of the main road on a slight hill by some great neighbours. In the upcoming days our location has proven to be a wise choice due to easy orientation and great proximity to all important points.

I can certainly say for both, we enjoyed the festival a lot. Even though it is now miles away from the good old Pepsi Sziget, even without any huge or at least good band, somehow also just on our own. The first day we saw Charlie XX or something like that from the main stage, and the performance of Empire of the Sun, which was not bad at all. We had a couple of nice talks, first with Mexican brothers, then with a guy from Norway, couple of big boys from Iceland and some other citizens. Also the citizens – staff, those working in small tents with varios purposes. And we chat with our three Italian neighbours regularly for sure.

Among the other shows, I say Justice was nice, but I personally could handle also the Kooks. And yeah, the jukebox stage introduced Berlin Manson, not to forget.    

Those 3 relaxed August days, finished on the Saturday morning, when our 3 days tickets expired. Firstly I took Tomas back to Sturovo, then I drove to Levice, packed windsurf and some stuff and then drove to Graz. Next day I will drive all the way to Peljesac.      

LIDO Sounds Linz

Since the news announcing the acts, we knew, we’re going to go for it. The compilation of Anna Calvi, Alt-J, Interpol + Florence & Machine was too strong to hold back. And if you can see all of them during a day, there is no room to hesitate.

The LIDO Sounds festival took place on a bank of Danube River in the centre of Linz. As it is a city festival, with no option to oversleep in a camp, it makes it really hard to find a reasonable hotel with any available room.

Thanks to Austrian law, allowing you to have a beer and still drive responsibly, we decided to stay in Marchtrenk and a place called hotel Fischer (10 of 10 definitely!) From there it was just a 15 mins drive to the festival are.

Unfortunately, we missed the early performing Anna Calvi, as the distance from Graz to Linz still takes some time, but were just on time to kick off Alt-J. However next to the second song there was an interception announced, due to a storm coming up.

Afterwards, once the clouds were gone, Alt-J finished their set and we moved on for Interpol. A gig I enjoyed a lot. Nevertheless, the headliner was still to come. And Florence doesn’t disappoint for sure. Her concert was energetic, peaceful and great.

And such was our first Linz experience.

Stockholm

Originally we did this trip to Stockholm between 28.6 and 30.6 because we wanted to secure at least one festival experience for the summer. Lollapalooza took our attention with a playlist including 2 of the best music performers. Arriving to the Swedish capital, we were very pleased by a perfect choice of our hotel. The Birger Jarl hotel (named after the town founder) was a wonderful selection. Heading out for the festival we were very surprised to see the “unique” swede, that we met the other week in our hometown 😁 Obviously he was surprised even more. 😂 The whole Friday we dedicated then to festival. It was a very nice experience, calm, clean just little bit expensive.

For Saturday and Sunday we had a kind of tour plan ready and tried to see as much of the city as possible. Places like Gamla Stan, Djurgarden (museum island), artist’s district Götgatan and Fotografiska we liked a lot. In addition we did a small tour within the town hall tower, from where there is beautiful view over the nearby islands. The atmosphere of the city, its infrastructure and proximity to sea have had some positive impacts on our memories.