055 - sat 24 jun - balaton/london

we said farewell to our dodgy lakeside hungarian tourist village, and successfully attempted to catch the right combination of train and bus to get to balaton airport. when the bus dropped us off at the airport, we saw nothing except for a wire fence with a big road running through it, and a sign saying 'Welcome to Balaton Airport! Terminal 1000m'. so we got walking.

the walk to the airport terminal was interesting, and probably unlike most walks you expect to have between airport shuttle service and airport terminal. usually it involves a couple of escalators, a lot of signs, and a lot of concrete and glass. instead it was a 1km walk through unkept woodlands, dodging out of the way of the occasional crappy hungarian car, nodding once to the security guys having a cigarette out the front of a depressing old building that must have been some kind of security office, wandering whether you are actually heading for the airport or if you have made some strange mistake. suz saw a little scorpion. we knew we were getting closer to the terminal proper, when we started to see what looked like bombed out old bomb shelters and rundown hangars. we figured that the new balaton airport - which is only a few years old - has been built on the site of an old abandoned airfield from 50 or so years ago. we turned the corner, and there it was, a shiny apparition of globalisation in the middle of an open field of nothing - balaton airport terminal, looking very much like an ikea building. we got ourselves sorted and boarded a plane back to stansted airport in london.

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