The End of the Fury:
Pepsi Island Festival Wraps Another Year

Budapest’s eighth Pepsi Island music festival has come to an end. As you stumbled onto the island this past week, you could not help but be taken aback by the shear scale of the event. It was like entering a microcosm; an entire world complete with roads, restaurants, showers and sports facilities. The Pepsi Island Festival, which takes place at the beginning of every August, is the biggest musical and cultural event in Central Europe: eight hundred programs, thirty venues, and this year an estimated three hundred thousand visitors.

From families with babies to punks, from Hari Krishna chants to Rock n’ Roll music, from Budapest locals to Australian backpackers, the festival was full of every type of person, music, food and nationality that can possibly be regrouped on one island.

“It’s an excellent festival,” exclaimed Eddy, a traveler from Transylvania. “You meet so many people, they’re all so different and all really friendly. You don’t speak the same language or anything, but everyone gets along.”

Although people of all ages came to Pepsi Island, most of the island-goers were students, whether traveling around Europe or having come especially for the festival. The dress code was easy: anything goes, though the preferred attire was shorts, sandals and a tee-shirt (optional for both sexes). With over 74% of visitors aged between 18 and 25 years old, the party-loving, fun-craving, crazy-dancing crowd atmosphere gained that extra energetic, hormone-filled feel to it.

Spontaneous concerts rapidly sprouted up all over the island like mushrooms after a wet night. The main stage catered for the biggest, most-awaited bands Oasis, Bloodhound Gang, Lou Reed, Chumbawamba and many more… Other stages such as the World Music, Jazz, Indian, Rock n’ Blues and African Village were only a few where one could learn about and dance to music genres that differ from mainstream culture.

On the World Music Stage, Mau Mau, a group from Torino, Italy jammed the afternoon away. When guitar player Luca from the group was asked exactly what 'World Music' is, he answered simply: “When I was a kid, 'World Music' was anything that wasn't from Italy… But really, it's only 'World Music' when I sell a million records!”

After the guests had spent a long day dancing, twirling around on the fairground or just wandering around, the Pall Mall Night Zone kicked off every evening at 11.00pm. Some of the worlds leading Trance and House DJs spun their decks in this tent as the party arena turned into one of the favorite island attractions where the crowds buzzed. The fact that a couple of them showed up forty-five minutes late was no problem, the tent was howling.

During the morning hours, party fans were still recovering from their exhausting night of cheering and boogieing. They were only to be seen emerging from tents in the early afternoon, while others were still lying on the same spot they were left trashed only a few hours earlier.

“I don’t know where I am,” a bewildered Hungarian teenager confessed one late afternoon, looking confusingly around.

Some gathered around the main games area. Wall climbing, frisbee, volleyball, football and even the ever-popular cake-throwing contest were available every afternoon for those who were prepared to fight the battle against their hangovers. Other more extreme sports, such as paintball and bungee jumping were offered (at a price) for those with higher adrenaline tolerance levels. If all of these activities were too much for the islanders with headaches, there was the less stressful possibility of participating in a mass-kissing event, with more than 1500 kissing couples breaking a Guinness record.

Two bands also publicly demonstrated their love, not for each other, but for Coca-Cola. Although Pepsi were the main sponsors of the festival, it didn’t stop Apollo 440 and the Bloodhound Gang from openly ragging on them. During Apollo 440’s fashionable foursome’s press conference, one band member who strolled in late, asked: “Can I have a drink… No, I want a Coca-Cola.” While nothing equaled the Bloodhound Gang’s cheekiness on the subject, ‘Evil Jared’, the bassist challenged one of his fans to come up and join them and drink an entire case of 24 cans of Coca-Cola for a hundred US dollars.

The poor guinea pig didn’t earn his hundred bucks, rather failing miserably. During the backstage inquiry re-Coke consumption, Jared explained: “He will keep drinking until he vomits. There is nothing more entertaining than to see some guy on stage puking.”

Overall, the festival went without any major hitches: all the bands showed up, nobody’s bungee jumping rope broke, the toilets (to be entered only when armed with a roll of extra-tough toilet paper and maybe disinfectant as well, just to be on the safe side) didn’t overflow… Even the Marriage and Divorce tent had queues of dozens of couples waiting for their moment of truth.

Most of the people who came to the festival left without any feeling of disappointment. Even the performing stars seemed ecstatic about the results of the Sziget. Uhrin Benedek, for example, the 78-year-old Hungarian star had a special appearance in front of a packed house. The newly discovered singer could not believe the response he got from his audience: “I can’t describe how happy I feel,” he stated, looking extremely overwhelmed after his very successful show.

Pepsi Festival left visitors euphoric, as if waking up from a dream when stepping onto the mainland. Besides Pepsi Sziget taking place on an island in the heart of Budapest (sziget means island in Hungarian), it is an island in the metaphorical sense. Sziget has a unique atmosphere: a meeting place with its own life-style, a cultural exhibition of musical talent, and a place of learning about each other that cannot be replicated in any way.

08.09
Laura Menez