Sziget festival opens today in Budapest

The Sziget music festival opens today, offering 200 acts each day at 66 locations around the Hajógyári sziget's 76 hectare site.

The festival will feature 252 international acts from 44 countries, and a further 500 from Hungary. The country supplying the largest number of foreign performers is Great Britain, with a total of 44 acts, including Franz Ferdinand, The Prodigy, Radiohead and Robert Plant.

Over the last 15 days some 6,000 workers have built stages, set up 39,000m2 of tents, and assembled the 840m2 main stage, which is 14 metres high and weighs over 80 tonnes. The number of showers and toilets has been increased, and some 400 health care staff and 1,500 security guards will be on site.

The army will be running a recruitment centre at the Sziget festival, while environmentalists Greenpeace will petition to save Rosia Montana in Romania. The festival's budget is Ft 2.3 billion (more than €8.5 million).

The above story is just one of more than two dozen published today by Hungary Around the Clock, the most comprehensive source of daily English-language news about Hungary. For a free trial of HATC, click here. Hungarian news sources include Népszabadság; Magyar Hírlap; Világgazdaság; Napi Gazdaság; Magyar Nemzet; Népszava; Kossuth Rádió news and Hungarian television's nightly news broadcast.

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