St. Stephens is MAD

I've ran with the bulls. But nothing prepared me for last night.

Yesterday, August 20th, was the Hungarian National Holiday, St. Stephens day. St. Stephens is the founder of modern Hungary, and the country's patron saint. He is supposed to protect Hungary.

In celebration of St. Stephens day, there were festivities all day, including a arts and crafts fair, a Air Race across the Danube, and in the evening a spectacular fireworks show, when fireworks would be launched from 4 different places along the Danube river, for 25 minutes. I love fireworks, and I actually stayed in Budapest for 2 extra days just to see this fireworks show and the air show.

The air show was interesting, the weather fantastic (look how blue the sky is in the photo). But this post isn't about the airshow, its about the fireworks.

At 9PM, I met with Mike and Paul, a Californian and a Englishman, near the Danube to see the show. As we were walking, we noticed some flashes of light, and assumed they were fireworks going off early. As we got closer, we realized it was lightning. But me and Mike both had lived in the Midwest for many years, we know thunderstorms.

The fireworks started on queue, launched from the bridge literally 50 meters in front of us, and from the castle on the hill across the river. For 5 minutes we watched in awe, surrounded by thousands of people all along the river. Then, it began to get windy.

"It's gonna rain! This is gonna be awesome", I told Mike and Paul. The wind was pushing the fireworks directly over us, and distorting the explosions.

"Holy shit...look over there", said Paul. I turned. A wall of rain was about to descend on us. At least, I thought it was rain.

Ensuing was chaos. Within 5 seconds, I was competely soaked. The wind picked up, chairs started flying, and everyone started to scream and run. A stampede, of thousands of people, all running away from the walls of hail and pounding rain. The trees were bent sideways, people were being flung against building. Time to get out of here!

We ran. The water was already ankle deep, in two minutes, and the hail was stinging my skin. All around me, children were crying, women screaming. It looked like a hurricane had hit, and for a moment there, I wanted nothing more than to hold onto someone or something. I was completely terrified. I was the scene from Godzilla, with everyone screaming and running across the bridge.

The fireworks from the castle went on.

Benches were being uplifted. We lost Paul as we ran towards Mike's hostel, the wind pushing us in different directions. We had no idea where we were, or where we were going, but somehow, we got to the hostel.

We were lucky. 6 people were killed, over 250 injured, and more are missing. Budapest castle was damaged, as were numerous carts and cars. Trees toppled. The streets after the storm were eerily silent, Hungarians are still in shock. The strongest storm to hit Budapest in years, right on the eve of the national holiday. I still can't believe what I saw last night, five minutes of pure terror, from a thunderstorm, something I though I was used to, living in Kansas. But I can say, in all my years in Kansas, I have never been in a storm that strong or that violent before.

BBC has a video of the chaos.
More on the storm.