Festival Overview and Report (November 2007)

  • Organized by Melinda and Itzvan Szemerey (and their family) representing the Feng Hui Magazine in Hungary plus a staff of 30 volunteers.

  • The location was in central Budapest in what is known as "Buda Castle", an exclusive
    area linked to a castle and where in the older times, the kings ruled from. The Hungarian
    team was able to rent a very expensive space at a reasonable cost (see story below).
    The Festival was held in the Hungarian Culture Foundation close to the Matthias Church where stands outside a statue of one of the famous Kings of Hungary wearing the famed jeweled Hungarian Crown.

  • Six presenters from the Dutch Festival in 2006, were in attendance:
    Blue Arrow Rainbow (formerly DesyRainbow, the Netherlands **)
    Sue Kitts ( England ** )
    Kathleen Murray (Scotland **)
    Andre Siegal (Germany **)
    Joshua Shapiro (the Netherlands / USA **)
    Lydia Trauttenberg (Guatemala)

    ** -- this speakers bio can be found to the menu on your right

  • This was the first time to offer such a gathering for the "Crystal Skulls" (or as the
    Mayans refer to these crystalline friends, the "Crystal Heads") within Hungary and only
    a small gathering of people was expected but as day of the Festival approached
    Melinda reported they received over 1000 phone calls of inquiry.

  • Melinda and her team had basically six months to organize everything (compared to
    over a year it took for the Dutch Festival) and it all came together magically!!

  • A local production company was able to film the Festival (in English, German and
    Hungarian of course) in the main area and a DVD will be available before the end
    of 2007. (for information contact: joshuashapiro@crystalskullevents.org )


outside Festival site

inside Festival site

Friday, October 12th - Sunday, October 14th, 2007 (Festival Location)

Here are photos from the Hungarian Cultural Foundation of
what the building where the Festival looks like from the outside
and the grand hall you see when you enter the Foundation.


Events leading up to the Hungarian Festival
(Budapest, Hungary, October 10th – 16th, 2007)

The idea for the Hungarian Festival began at the Dutch Festival in October of 2006. There was a special friend who attended from Hungary, (the only person) named Erika Pinter.  She sat down for a lunch with co-coordinator Joshua Shapiro and told him that she felt very strongly that Hungary would be a great place for a future Festival for the Crystal Skulls.  A few days after the Holland event ended, the Festival team received an email from Melinda Szemerey, also from Hungary.  She had just learned about the Dutch Festival and was a bit sad she had missed this special event as she had a strong interest in the crystal skulls.  Melinda, besides being the editor of a publication also has organized several events in Budapest and does spiritual tours.  She also started to inquire if it might be possible to offer a crystal skull festival in Hungary in the future and asked how could one be setup?  Thus, in the fall of 2006, the seeds to create the next Festival in Budapest had begun.

Melinda became very good friends with Joshua Shapiro and his partner Blue Arrow Rainbow (DesyRainbow) and then invited them to visit Hungary in April of 2007 for a few days. This was an experiment, to see if the Hungarian people would really have an interest and affinity for the crystal skulls.  The visit to Budapest included some presentations (one at a large spiritual conference and another at a local spiritual center) plus private sessions that featured the crystal skulls that were in the care of Blue Arrow Rainbow and Joshua.  The visit was highly successful and thus a decision was made at this time by Melinda and her husband István to go ahead and organize a festival for Hungary.

At first Melinda was offered for free a location for the Festival that was outside of Budapest but it was so far from Budapest that there wasn’t very good public transportation to this destination, thus it became impractical.  But with the dates for the Festival being announced for October and this event then was only about two-three months away, Melinda had to scramble to find a better location.  Fortunately (or as Melinda said, it was a miracle done by the crystal skulls themselves ), she had a friend who was the owner of the Hungarian Culture Foundation, a large building located in the exclusive area of Budapest known as the “Castle Area”.  This gentleman was a big fan of Melinda’s magazine. Therefore, this owner decided to offer this very exclusive and expensive location for a very fair price to Melinda which was accessible by many forms of public transportation. And this is how the site for the Hungarian Festival was decided.  According to Melinda, the opportunity to have this location was very special as normally this building is rented out many months in advance and impossible to secure on such short notice.  The foundation also had a few hotel rooms, for which all the speakers were able to stay in. This allowed them to be situated at the Festival site so it was more convenient to be nearby and also the private sessions with the crystal skulls were conducted within the speaker's rooms as well.

The Hungarian Culture Foundation sits next to the Matthias Church, where stands a statute of
one of the most famous Kings of Hungarian who is shown wearing the famous jeweled Hungarian
crown and the Fishermen's Bastion. The building of the Culture Foundation was built in the early 20th century and resembles a palace of new gothic style. Many special events are held here in
this location, all year long. The main part of the Festival was actually held in a restaurant in the basement of this building which was converted for the event.  It provided us with space for
about 400-500 people and a stage at the front, where the general lectures were all presented
by the invited speakers.




Meet the Speakers at the Hungarian Festival with Melinda

This photo is taken during the meeting with the volunteers
on Friday evening, October 12th. As the volunteers get a first
chance to meet all the speakers and the crystal skulls.

From your left to right, we have: Andre Siegal, Melinda Szemerey,
Sue Kitts (with back), Dino (the English translator), Blue Arrow Rainbow
,
Joshua Shapiro, Lydia Trattenburg and Kathleen Murray


To assist Melinda, she was able to organize a group of about 30 volunteers who were either
helpers for the speakers (each speaker had two assistants), translators, guides for the participants or taking reservations at the door. Melinda was able to advertise the event via her magazine and also she had a few contacts in the local media.  She worked with Blue Arrow Rainbow and Joshua to find the right combination of speakers to invite from within Europe, all who had been involved with the Dutch Festival (note: Lydia Trauttenberg had assisted the Mayan Priest in Holland but
now came by herself from Guatemala to teach about the Maya and their links with the Crystal Skulls).  Each of the speakers also had their own crystal skulls which they brought including some very old Jade Skulls that came with Kathleen Murray and her partner Clive from Scotland. 

It was decided to make this event smaller, with less activities and speakers then the Dutch Festival as some people gave feedback from the former event that there were too many activities to choose from.  So it felt the best way to proceed was to have just one lecture and one workshop at the same time as well as to keep the entrance fee to attend very reasonable as Hungary is not
a wealthy country. 

The organizers thought that the Festival might see maybe 100 or 200 people attending as there was not a lot of information being shared publicly about the crystal skulls in Hungary thus far.  But over 1000 people contacted Melinda and her staff and eventually there were over 600 people
who visited us during this two day event.  Between the organization of Melinda and her team and the wonderful support of the volunteers, the Hungarian Festival proceeded and was run extremely smoothly.  We did have a brief scare when the crystal and jade skulls of Kathleen because they didn’t arrive with her on Thursday evening from Scotland.  At Heathrow airport in London at this time, there was a problem with their main computers and it threw everything into chaos with the luggage.  But fortunately the airport delivered the skulls late on Friday night so finally all the visiting skulls were present for the start of the Festival on Saturday morning.


Continue to Read Part 2 of the Festival Report < click here >