Every day at Sziget Festival around 200 couples get married in the wedding tent. According to the certificate the couples promise they will be faithful to their partners at least until the end of the festival. The wedding is a hilarious, but succesful idea: For the drunken people, for the burning festival loves – and for the not-only-festival couples who are not yet ready to say yes in real life.

In the tent, which is sponsored by a hungarian tv station, there is a lot of pink and white. Balloons and ribbons in every corner you look. From the boxes comes cheesy music from the Kelly Familiy. To the left behind a table sits a Hungarian dressed up like Elvis, with golden sunglasses and a not too well fitting wig. To the right sits a girl who is supposed to be Marilyn Monroe – a Marilyn with brown eyes. If you are very drunk you mihgt even think that this wedding chapel is in Las Vegas.

Hello Sziget Festival 2011! Hello Budapest!

Kristin Kruthaup, E&M reporter has been in Budapest, Hungary since Friday to cover one of Europe’s biggest festivals. Not only is the Sziget Festival is expected to have 400, 000 visitors in total but is probably the most European one. From the Netherlands alone more than 12, 000 guests come each year. But in the festival’s John Lennon and Bob Marley street, you can also hear a lot of Italian, French, German and English speaking people.

Fruzsina Szép, 33, is the programm director of Sziget Festival in Budapest. She is an interesting mix of Hungarian-German and grew up in Munich beore moving to Budapest. For the past 12 months she has worked organising the festival with overall repsonsibility for the 1000 programs and 60 venues at the festival, she is the one who decides what is shown and who gets this presitigous invite.

E&M: Fruzsina, where did you just come from and where are you going next?

I know this isn't really the first band from Brighton I'm reporting about and definitely not the first British rock band. But all the rock and blues fans need to check them out: If you’re into dirty guitar riffs and a bluesy sound, Ice Black Birds is your band. They already have a bunch of highly acclaimed singles out there and are either working hard in the studio or touring the world for concerts, they certainly always living the rock’n roll lifestyle. For all the other fun things the guys are up to, check their blog and make sure to watch out for their very first record which is coming out soon!

E&M: Tell us a bit about your trip to NYC and Austin, Texas in March. Did you ever have a moment where you felt particularly European?

IBB: Yeah, it was very different in a really good way. The culture is great and the country is so vast you really feel like you’re on an adventure. There was one culture shock incident where we were in a very busy deli in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to get some food and Sam brought the impatient queue to a standstill when innocently spotting and asking for a "pain au chocolat" to which the clerk and whole queue went blank to the elusive choice, in their haste and confusion the clerk pulled out numerous pastry based confectionary for Sam to give a simple yes/no answer, after going through all the possibilities eventually sourced the request. To which Sam confirmed the choice and already feeling guilty and embarrassed for holding up twenty people,  the Clerk responded "Oh, you mean a ‘chocolate croissant’!'" and a woman in the queue piped, "He ALREADY pointed at that!" of course being corrected about the correct name is a bit of a shock! And a mistake made by their part towards a European food, yes, makes you feel particularly European.

E&M: Your tour around Europe this year was very successful. Do you still remember your very first concert together as a band?

Looking for a band that really embraces the European mind set? Check out PUSTKI, a fantastic band from Warsaw, Poland! This combo writes their songs in Polish, plays international festivals, loves European inspiration and puts together a catchy yet unique sound. It‘s great to come across a band that has managed to create new music that you can relate to whether you understand the Polish lyrics or not. I interviewed PUSTKI‘s bassist Szymon Tarkowski for E&M; read on to find out what he thinks about playing gigs outside his home country and listening to non English music. 

E&M: A couple of years back you wrote quite a lot of music for movies and theatre productions. In what way is that different from being totally free to write?

Pustki: We're still doing it. Last month we wrote some music for a movie about Gdynia (a town in northern Poland). It actually gives you even more freedom than writing songs, because you're not restricted to the typical form of a song - you can expand your ideas and concentrate more on instrumental parts. This is always a nice change from our normal activities.

E&M: Pustki songs have really cool music videos.  Who comes up with the concepts?