Mere meters away from some of the Sziget Festival’s most uncontrollable crowds of rowdy revelers, thousands of “Szitizens” spend days of their lives occupying random spots in the “basic camping” sections – sprawling scenes of multicolored tents erected in anarchic fashion, full of teeming masses preparing to party or recuperating from multi-day hangovers, all completely coated with either dust or mud before the last concert’s over. While nobody expects a relaxing nature retreat while camping at Sziget, there are a few ways to maximize the experience – here’s how to rough it with style.

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Divide and conquer

If arriving to the festival with a group of friends (or even newfound acquaintances from the ticket line), consider splitting up near the entrance so that one group can watch the baggage while the other group can claim a good spot more quickly – one member of the group can reserve the perfect place with a couple of spread-out blankets until the rest of the party can relocate it.

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Choose where wisely

You know what shows you’re coming to see at Sziget. For laid-back types who are into reggae, blues, and going to sleep anytime before 3am, try to find a campsite near stages playing mellow music, where the last concert ends soon after midnight. On the other hand, if you’re into thumping electronica, then it won’t be a problem if you camp next to the strobe-lit arena blasting into dawn.

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Seek high ground

As of press time, the weather forecast for Sziget week predicts plenty of sunshine, but freak storms have certainly deluged Budapest in summers past (and this one). Camping on a site with any bit of elevation – even just a meter or two above nearby flatland – greatly reduces the chances of your tent and everything in it becoming soaked with a flash flood of festival-filth runoff.

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Get shady

If it isn’t raining, it’ll probably be bright and sunny throughout Sziget week – and although this is a great thing while out and about enjoying carefree high times during daytime, if your party went on the night before until sunrise and beyond, good luck sleeping it off in a baking tent exposed to blazing rays. Bring a compass to find a campsite that’s shaded from sunrise to the east.

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Frontier gear

From air mattresses to hammocks to inflatable chairs to tables, feel free to bring whatever equipment you can get past security to transform your Sziget campsite into an optimally comfortable pleasure palace, but unfortunately you can’t expect that this kit will survive the week’s festivities intact… and this pointer most certainly applies to your tent, as well.

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Fences and neighbors

One of many good reasons to be cordial with your new campsite neighbors is to plan infrastructure. The slim path in front of your tent can become a foot-traffic superhighway within a day – avoid this by coordinating your tent layout with nearby campers to create strategic clusters that are bigger obstacles for random passersby, who may mistake nearby shrubbery for public toilets.

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Bathroom breaks

Unless you enjoy a 24-hour orchestra of slamming portable-toilet doors while smelling a potpourri of bodily odors, choose a campsite as far away from bathroom facilities as your bladder will feasibly allow – the extra tight-kneed walking is well worth it, especially if the aforementioned rainstorms may appear; woe be to the flatland camper sited next to a “toi toi” in a downpour.

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You’ll stop the rain

If worst comes to worst and a summer storm does fall on Sziget to soak your tent and everything therein, try to embrace it and laugh it off – take comfort in knowing that you won’t be the only mud-coated “Szitizen” wandering around in the merry morass; besides which, pretty much everyone who goes to Sziget catches some sickness or another, even if they’re not camping there.

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Spruce up the place

Your campsite will literally be your home for an entire week – why not festoon it with some fun decorations, often found in abundance just lying around on the festival grounds? With a little imagination and some colorful found objects, you may create one of Sziget’s most appealing homespun landmarks – which may certainly help attract a special guest to come check out your tent…

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Take only memories, leave only… yeah, right.

The Sziget organizers employ a small army of workers to clean up the massive mess after the concerts conclude, and scavengers pick through the piles in search of any unwanted usable items, so you don’t really have to clean up after yourself when you leave… but if you want to be a decent human being, at least put all your trash in a bag, and toss any bigger detritus on the nearest garbage heap.

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