Reuters published an article about weapon ownership in different countries. I was a little bit surprised to see Finland on the third position on a per-capita basis. In Finland there are 56 weapons per 100 citizens. That would mean almost 3 million weapons.

Many of those are hunting weapons as hunting is popular hobby in Finland (around 300 000 hunters). It is common that a hunter has both a shotgun and a rifle. But even if every hunter had three hunting weapons it would make the total amount only 900 000.

So, then there are plenty of people having a pistol or similar for sport shooting. Maybe another million there. But there are still one million weapons somewhere. Apparently some individuals have plenty of firepower...

Oh, just for your information. Buying a firearm is not a simple process in Finland. First you need a buying license for certain type of a weapon and usually membership of a shooting club or a hunting club is needed. Then you buy the weapon and after that you get a license to own posses it. This is valid for one year and after that you have to proof that you have used it for the reason you announced in the first step. After that you get a long term license.

I had a chat with my Finnish friend who was visiting Budapest and Sziget. We were naturally comparing it to Finnish rock festivals. I used to visit Ilosaarirock couple times, Provinssirock once and then some smaller ones.

And there are differences. The first one is alcohol policy. You are not allowed to bring your own bottles in the Finnish festival area. Inside area there are fenced places to buy and consume beer and cider. You can imagine farmer's pig pen to get the idea. No strong alcohol sold usually and there is a mighty gatekeeper checking that you do not smuggle your drink outside restricted area.

In Sziget you are not allowed to bring your own palinka from your uncle's garage but once you are inside you are not controlled like cattle. You can get your drink from numerous places inside festival area. They sell those in plastic cups so they are not considered to be lethal so you can carry your beer everywhere. Apparently Hungarian adults are responsible enough not to pass beer onto kids.

Then another difference is the amount of clashes between people. Even though Sziget is huge, the security was not really visible. Maybe because of lack of those alcohol selling zones there was no need for controlling them either. Also, people seemed to have good mood instead of arguing and fighting while being totally wasted. Finnish festivals can be very nice as well - especially when they are a little bit alternative festivals.

On Saturday morning we went to Tokaj. It is famous for its wines so it was also our aim to taste some of it. But instead visiting a traditional wine cellar we did our wine tasting on a river boat.



The boat trip is organized by the producer of Mercatus wines who also has a winery in the town. The boat featured design details from 1950's and the roof line was like from 1956 Chevy. But we were there not to judge boat's outlook. So it was time for the wines.



We started with Tokaji Furmint 2004. It is a dry wine and I liked it pretty much. As I am not a serious wine hobbyist, I will save you from words like lively, fruity and such. I do not remember the detailes of all wines since we tried five different.

After Furmint we continued towards sweeter wines. Next ones were semisweet version of Tokaji Furmint 2004, semisweet Tokaji Hárslevelű 2004 and Tokaji Sárgamuskotály 2005. These were also okay but I don't like sweet wines that much. While tasting the host explained the history of the wine producing and characteristics of each wine.



The fifth and the last one was three puttonyos Tokaji Aszú 2001. The bigger puttonyos number the sweeter the wine is. Six is the sweetest possible. After tasting this wine we had possibility to try out more of these wines as long as the cruise on the river lasted.



However, we were not ready after cruise to go home so we visited the winery of the Mercatus wines. There we bought couple bottles to take home and we also did sugar test with six puttonyos Tokaji Aszú. The sweetness of the wine was very clearly over the sweetness of the normal crystal sugar. The sugar did not have any taste after tasting this wine.



We definitely had a good day in Tokaj. With good weather and tasty wines the boat trip was really pleasant.

Alright, I selected some photos taken by Dóra from Sziget festival. These are from Saturday, August 11th 2007.

Sziget world music stage around noon

Heavy rain created new recreational opportunities

While some did not care about there outlook...

... others were paying attention to every detail

Sziget main stage around 10 pm.

Heh, today we got a good idea. Instead worrying about the weather and the air show we decided to drop that plan and go to Sziget festival. So, while returning from Friday afternoon beer we did shopping at Nyugati pályaudvar and bought tickets for Saturday. We have not been to Sziget festival before so it is about the time to visit.