08-VIII-1995.
I see I was on sezam at 2:24... commenting some news item here, from Magyar Hírlap, about Mira having left Sloba („the missus with a flower in her hair has left the well-intended citizen“), because it has "become clear to her that the position of first lady of the state demands something with a shorter skirt". The Hírlap is the biggest newspaper around here, about A1 size when unfolded, you need a servant to hold the opposing page.
This means we stayed in the office at least by that time, then went across to get some shut-eye.
Nevertheless, Go and I got on the bus rather early, probably before 8. The bus station in Gemenc was maybe a kilometer and a half away from our place, so walking was no problem. I had enough forints, though not too much, the next salary would be in a few days. Weather was really nice, fine summer day.
We got to Budapest on time, then strolled the streets at random, just walking around until the set time. It was like being partially at home, we could hear our language(s) every few meters. She met several classmates. We heard a lot of croatian, even some slovenian. Didn't hear too much hungarian - the Váci utca, the shopping street, was generally a gathering place, a walking embassy, of both Croatia, FRY and maybe Bosnia.
Walking around, we came to some side street and as we were looking at a hardware shop's window, here comes Marko Janković, the famous guy from Studio Be. After a brief eye dance, he understands that we recognized him and goes straight into „hi, would you know where to buy memories for an aitchpee laser printer?“ „I know a place across in Buda, but they sell to businesses only, no retail“. Never mind then, fuckit, bye.
At 17:00 sharp, we were at Zserbó, the big cukrazda (cakeshop) on Váci, where the gang from sezam was waiting. I lost track of most of the others over the years, and don't really remember who was there, apart from Škrba. There was no account of it on sezam in the following two days, perhaps in the oldwave group, but I don't have the group messages, so no clue. Weak is the memory, fragile is the knowledge.
The concert organizers forbade taking in any bottles, cameras or other recording devices, so the only people at the moment who had a camera were those who were parked nearby. The others came by chartered bus, and just didn't trust to leave the cameras there, not knowing when would the driver be there to unlock it. So we had some pictures taken by someone, but never got a copy. The woes of the chemical process.
We went to have lunch/dinner at some obscure place near the bus station, which was narrow, kind of grimy, the seats were wooden (probably old railway seats), the waiters were grumpy - but the beer was great (yeah, right, Hungary finally has good beer) and the wiener schnitzel (aka bécsi szelet) was the size of elephant's ear.
We walked all together to the Nép stadium (which our reporters always called Nep, but it actually means "People's"), where we lost sight of others and went to find a good place to stand. We tried first to stand somewhere in the middle, maybe 10m behind the front line, but as soon as the local stars (I think it was the Hobo Blues Band) started playing, the physical force of the sound pressure, from some sixty square meters of speakers, made it rather hard to breathe, at least for me. So we shifted to the right until I was breathing normally.
By the time the Stones appeared on the scene, we were sardine-packed. We could keep our hands up or down, but no horizontal movement or position was possible. I positively unglued when they started playing "Sympathy for the devil". Soon afterwards, rain started, but it didn't get below our elbows. It just somewhat soaked everybody's shoulders, but the heat of the crowd, and packedness, made anything below elbows stay dry.
(post festum, from yoochoob)
The audience was, as I expected, mixed from early teenage to fairly older than me. And they knew the words of almost all songs. And the cultural meaning of all this, for me, was that there's still some of that spirit of the early seventies alive out there, and the out there still exists, and our forced solipsism is just... forced and temporary, this will pass and we'll rejoin the rest of the world. Which was still amputated for the time being, and waiting for us. Whenever we're let out of this cage.
After the concert, some time around midnight, we followed the crowd to get to the kelleti pályaudvar (east railway station, also metro), and wanted to take the metro to the west one, but... metro opens at 05:00. We'll have to wait, then.
Mentions: 04-X-2021., Gemenc, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), oldwave, sezam, in serbian