We get up early as we want to read more news about riots in London. We’ve been picking up on the story of rioting in Tottenham, and find that it spread to some other parts of London including Enfield and South London. It looks terrible – from what is being shown on TV young people are just out, smashing into shops and taking what they want. We text a few friends who live in the area we later get a reply from Chin who works on Tottenham High Street and things look really bad and terrible there. It’s such a shame to have looting for no real reason and all this destruction. We keep reading the news even though it is so shocking and sad.
We end up leaving the hotel earlier than we need to as we’re all set to go and it means we don’t need to rush in the walk to the port. Outside it’s raining lightly but we put our jackets on as it’s a little chilly too. The breeze by the river wakes us up and we soon get to the port. There are a few people sitting around but it’s not entirely clear what we need to do to ‘check-in’ for a boat. We put the bag down and speak to the person at the ticket office who just tells us to wait in the main area so we settle down with our electronics out to pass the time.
More people arrive and we occasionally get up to walk a circuit around the building to see if any new boats have pulled up, but there’s no sign. It gets closer and closer to 10.30, when we should be leaving, and we ask again about our boat and are told again to just wait. It’s a little disconcerting, but with the other people around at least it means that we haven’t missed it!
The long wait means we could have had breakfast anywhere in town, or even at the coffee shop in the port that opened at 10am – we didn’t as we thought this would surely mean the boat would arrive the moment we were served! To stave off the hunger we start to munch the sandwiches that we bought yesterday, and this does the trick as soon enough we are called through as the boat has finally arrived!
As we booked our tickets online we only have a printed confirmation email with us, but when the skipper sees this he hands us a set of proper tickets that have a post-it note with our name on. We feel all official and so climb aboard. The boat has come down from Vienna this morning and it seems there is already someone sat on every row. However, we’re becoming experts at getting seats and manage to find a row of three to ourselves – it later transpires this is because one of the chairs has a default position of ‘recline’!
It’s cosy inside the hydrofoil with everyone on, but it’s an incredibly smooth ride – more like a train than a boat because even though we’re going at quite some speed there are no waves to disrupt our flow as we just fly over them with the bow rising upwards. Out of the window we see small towns of red brick go past amongst the green trees and landscape. Where there is a path to the river’s edge we can see a sandy approach that some people have taken advantage of on their deck chairs from their gardens, or driven up with their cars, gazebo and barbeque.
Our speed slows and the wide river starts to narrow. We’re in the main cabin, but there is a camera on the front of the boat that is linked to a screen in front of us and we see that we’re approaching a narrow bricked channel. Once we’re closer we see that actually this stretch of the Danube has a lock on it and we’re going down it!
We are moored up and are dwarfed by the size of the lock – we take up only a fraction of what must accommodate huge freight ships and river cruise boats that look a lot like the ones that run up and down the Nile, except with fewer outdoor swimming pools. As we’re stationary (well, our movement is just up and down, rather than along!) they open the top deck and we climb out amongst the smokers to take a look at the massive lock. It’s far larger than the one at Esna, and this makes it slower for the waters to drop, but doesn’t stop it still being a spectacle for all around who gather on decks and on the bank.
The journey continues with green trees lining the sandy banks and soon enough our phones beep to tell us that we are finally in Hungary – our final country of this long trip. As we approach the suburbs of Budapest we grab the video camera to film Sziget Island as we pass. The site isn’t nearly as exciting as we’d hoped since dense trees along the banks cover the festival from view and, unless you were looking, you would hardly notice the odd gap revealing large signs or striped tents. Although the press coverage has increased over the years with Sziget becoming more and more prominent on the European festival circuit, the trees have done a good job at hiding it away for it to remain our little secret.
The port for Budapest is in a far grander location than that in Bratislava as we pass the parliament building and alight in the middle of downtown, opposite the Gellert Baths which contain the best wave machine ever, as we discovered in 2007. It’s so odd after all the travelling we’ve done in the two weeks on this journey to be at our final destination. Amongst the excitement there’s certainly a few sighs off relief and hopes that we might now be able to rest a bit…but then we think of Sziget and know that, although we might be cheating by being in a hotel, we’re not going to let a week of intensive music and arts be restful. After all, this is what we came all this way for!
Before long we’ve negotiated the Metro and a tram line to get us to our hotel. The public transport carnet we had left over from last time is still valid, and it feels quite fun to be using tickets we bought at the end of our previous visit to come back again two years later. There’s a thrill at the familiarity of our surroundings – we can even still sing the tune that the public transport intercom makes as you pull into the next station. In the hotel itself we smile politely as the trainee receptionist tells us where everything is – we don’t have the heart to tell her this is our third visit to the same hotel.
Heading upstairs we find our room and deposit our bags. Thirsty, we go to grab our water bottle – the first water bottle we bought when we landed at Heathrow at the end of June. It’s been with us on every part of our summer holiday from London to Buxton (and back) and all the way to here in Hungary. It’s with a touch of sadness that we find the label has finally torn – it’s survived the best part of 1,600 miles of travelling but given up after entering a 5* spa hotel. I like to think it’s the bottle’s small indication of disapproval of our middle-class and middle-aged approach to the festival.
With a quick change of t-shirt, we opt to head to the festival site and sort out our wristbands. Although there’s a bit of queuing to get on site – and a lot of confusion regarding how we get a card for their new payment system – we’re on site less than hour after leaving the hotel. And at this point, dear reader, this written blog ceases. Although it can never do justice to the full 7 days of the festival, our 3-hour Sziget Special radio show attempts to give an idea of the atmosphere of what is, in our opinion, the greatest show of arts and music in the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment