054 - fri 23 jun - lake balaton

when we booked our flight to get back to london, we booked it with one of the cheap airlines who didn't actually have flights running out of budapest, but instead ran their flights out of a small airport in a part of hungary known as lake balaton, which is a popular resort area around the shores of hungary's largest lake. its a place i think where a lot of hungarians go for their weekends or for the summer. so when we booked the flights we thought this would be a good excuse to get out of budapest and head for a part of hungary that we might not have chosen ourselves.

we had a bit of trouble initially finding the right combination of trains that would get us to lake balaton, and we weren't aided by the fact that we didn't know exactly where we were going. we were yet to actually get a clear understanding of where this airport was, so we just headed for the main town along the shores of lake balaton, kezthely. eventually we got there, after stopping at a couple of other balaton towns, and checked in to a hotel.

the towns along the shore of lake balaton, at least from what we saw, definitely have more than a little bit of a seaside tourist town vibe, caravan parks and rickety seaside carnivals, garish restaurants and knick-knack shops, that actually reminded me of the kind of little towns that you might see on the sunshine coast. kezthely was a nice enough town, and after our great half-day of biking around budapest we decided to be adventurous and find somewhere to hire bikes from. when we found the hire store, eventually, we struggled through some banter with the hungarian owner of the store - she and us somehow managed to find common ground through a combination of english and german - and hired bikes for some exorbatant price. with the bikes we rode around town, and up to the majestic mansion that sits to its north. after a bit of a stroll around its gardens, we decided we'd had enough of the bikes and that now we needed to soak in some sun and sand on that famous lake balaton shoreline.

we headed for the only beach in town, which you have to pay to get into, and it was very busy. grass patches filled with families, edged by concrete footpaths that are lined with kiosks and hot food stalls selling typically vile fast food. the sandy beaches along lake balaton are, of course, artificial but i don't think we were expecting what we found on the bottom of the lake when we did eventually abandon our towels and go for a dip. because what was sand on the shore was not sand in the lake, but more of a sand/mud mixture that very quickly became simply just mud as you waded into it. add to that some decent amounts of seaweed and just general floaty bits, and you begin to wonder how much effort they really put in to creating this artificial lakeside beach, supposedly the best in lake balaton. but its easy for us to forget i guess how we might take for granted the beaches we have at home. this is hungary! they don't even have a coastline! so i guess they are doing alright. but we didn't last very long in the lake.

after a bit of a sunbake, we grabbed a bottle of wine that we had picked up somewhere on our travels and not yet consumed, and took it out to the park, and leisurely consumed it. as the sun went down we found a nearby restaurant, out the front of a hotel, that looked the least dodgy (!) and enjoyed a light meal and more wine. we had a very cute albeit stressed out hungarian waiter who was obviously trying very hard to impress us. well actually, before long i began to notice that his boss was spending almost the entire evening looking over his shoulder, making sure he was getting everything right, so i don't think it was us that this young guy was desperately trying to impress. ordering wine was a bit of a struggle - in one of those completely absurd moments of language difficulty, and not knowing how to pronounce the hungarian word for win, we said the word wine in about 10 different ways to blank looks from our poor waiter. it was only when suz whacked the 'v' on the front, in a german style like 'vine', he understood straight away. its just one of those things. but i don't think i'll forget the look on his face when he, having excitedly fetched us the bottle of wine that we had asked for, went to open the bottle and tore the cork in half in the process. he was shattered, the look on his face was enough for suz to immediately say 'oh we do that all the time.' but what he really needed was for his boss to get off his back. we fished the bits of cork out of our wine, and chuckled about the fact that the only english word the waiter really knew was 'please' and that he said it every time he did anything.

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