css Zen Garden

            One of Europe’s largest festivals rose out of the new world of “post-changes” Hungary.  Sziget (“Island”) Festival (see map above), a weeklong celebration of music and culture, celebrated its twelfth-anniversary this past August (2004).  From its inception, the festival has been popular with native Hungarians, particularly for residents of Budapest since the event takes place near the heart of the city, on the Danube’s “Ship Builder’s Island.”  The first year brought 43,000 visitors and the number of participants has increased steadily to the current estimate of more than 350,000 per year.  A few dips in attendance throughout the years have occurred, primarily thought to be due to heavy rain or extreme heat.  While it retains a distinctly Hungarian essence, Sziget is no longer an exclusively domestic event.  It is on the calendars of many Europeans, especially those in their late teens and twenties.  To an extent, Sziget has become synonymous with Hungary in the minds of many young Europeans.

            The festival's name was originally Diák (“Student”) Sziget and in 1996 it was officially and controversially changed to the name of its primary sponsor, hence Pepsi Sziget.  This renaming as the result of corporate sponsorship spawned some slight resentment among the regular attendees.  A particular lightly bitter humor and urban mythology arose from this “takeover,” which was not unlike a micro nostalgic version of the resigned but rebellious attitude taken under political domination of times past.  In those years, under this regime, searches at the bridge entrance revealing contraband Coca-Cola being smuggled onto the island were routinely confiscated. [1]   While the festival was always seen as belonging to the people, the name was officially changed in 2002 to simply Sziget, which is how diehard festival-goers had referred to the event for years.

               Sziget has developed, like California’s Burning Man, into a utopian vision.  The festival was even “subtitled” Euro-Woodstock in its second year.  The event not only brings large-name international musicians as headliners, but also features various themed music “genre” stages, theatre performance venues, and tent centers focusing on everything from human rights to religious meditation.  At the same time it is a consumer’s paradise, a Disney World of food and entertainment.  It strives to be a village in itself for a week, and in many ways it succeeds.  It is a curious village:  both Hungarian and international at the same time.  Hungary—and the common culture of the Visegrad nations—certainly had a strong tradition of music and arts festival previous to the changes of 1989.  As can be found on the Folk stages and some of the “beer hall” tents frequented by an older crowd, there are certainly elements of the “local” Díosgyör Folk Festival and the “regional” Warsaw Jazz Festival (to name but two with roots in the communist era) in the formation of Sziget.  However, the vision is not at all nostalgic for festivals of the past, but aiming for an alternative cultural utopia: a world village of the future with aspects of the traditional interspersed with the international.

            In many ways the alternative cultural village of Sziget has become more well-known than Hungary itself within Europe.  As the outsider’s interest in the situation of the former Eastern bloc wanes somewhat, and the unrealized remnants of a Restorative Nostalgia fade, Hungarian culture—like every other—continues to create an idea (idyllic or not) of the present.  Rather than the visitors of the 1990’s many of whom were searching for a lover reminiscent of the past in the historic city of Budapest, today’s Sziget citizens, be they Hungarians or non-natives, are engaged in a search for a island utopia that lies solely in neither the past nor the future.  It is a “lateral” nostalgia for a world unrealized.