ESL Blogs

This summer I spent ten days by the lake Balaton in Hungary. It was great holiday with little bit tropical weather but we all enjoyed it a lot. Balaton is not any small pond, it is the biggest lake in the central Europe with its length 70 km and width 24 km. If u want to go around the whole lake it would take you I guess few days since it is 200 km.

Hungary isn´t so far away from the Czech republic, even though the language is totally different and pronounciation doesn´t give me any logical sense :D The point is that if you finally looked up a word you need, you realize that you are unable to read it. Hungarian language is similar to Finnish or Estonian language.

To overcome the distance of 530 km with two little kids by car took us six and half hour. We had to stop twice to let the kids play, walk, eat. When we arrived to the hotel, we were excited! Great big garden, playground for the kids, outdoor pool etc. Anyway, my excitement was gone when I came to know that receptionist - old uncle - can speak only Hungarian language and German, no English at all :D Honestly, my German isn´t anything extraordinary, I just can understand but as for speaking it is tragedy. When I somehow told him we arrived and we have paid nine nights, showed him contract with the travel agency, he checked it in the computer and from his face I saw he was confused, something was wrong. Anyway, he told us to sit down and to wait. My nervosity was being increased second by second. After ten minutes of neverending waiting, he finally appeared with some keys and told us, there is no free room in the hotel. We all were staring at him like he must be kidding us. He paused and added that  there are also apartments that belong to the hotel. We went there and I was like wooow! Instead of one room in the hotel we got apartment with kitchen and living roomd on the ground floor and two bedrooms on the first floor, plus balcony. Uncle told us that if we like it, we can stay here for all ten days, if not - tomorrow he is able to prepare for us hotel room. Well, I think we would be silly not to stay in the apartment. Later we went for dinner to the restaurant which was situated in the complex of the hotel. Guess what? I was scared if I am able to order some food there :D So many ideas crossed my mind – like to download German dictionary etc. Luckily, there was one waiter who spoke English. Sincerely, it made me calm becasue we were able to order dish without any problems. We tried Hungarian cuisine and I have to admit everything we ate there was delicious. We all gained :D

The very next day we found great beach for the kids with shallow water in the city Balatonlelle. One was able to walk there more than 300 metres and water level reached their waist :D It was cool to see the people so far away from the beach in the water like this. Anyway, it became little bit cloudy and later started raining. We thought it would be just shower but we were wrong !!! It turned to heavy rain, lightening all around and suddenly I saw thanks to strong wind big wave!!! We took kids, only the most important stuff and tent (it is sun tent to make shadow for the kids) we left there. People started yelling, kids were crying, all were running out of  there. In such situation you can see how nature can easily play with us. It was the worst storm I have ever experienced. Everything wet, we had to buy two towels to cover the kids with it. When husband went for the tent back there he told us that the beach looked like after some battle. Mess was everywhere since all just ran away.

Luckily following days passed without any tragic affair! We visited many interesting places like so called capital city of Balaton lake – Siofok, which is very popular especially among young people. We saw many of them just hanging around and at nights they enjoyed the parties – for family not twice smart choice to live near the clubs there. The city itself is very nice and I liked it. Very long promenade, I would say around one km, nice parks where we found some shadow because it was around 40 degrees, many flowers everywhere and many attractions for the tourists. Another city we visited was Keszthely – there was beautiful castle and museum of railway models in historical city (my son is in love with trains), swan walking on the street and nice garder of the roses. Not so far away from our place we visited ruins of the castle Kerekivar. Another interesteing place was peninsula Tihany with Benedict Abbey and Hermit´s houses, volcano Badacsony with awesome watchtower, picturesque view, wineyards and also Balatonföldvar – another beautiful city by the lake. We bought there some typical Hungarian products like white wine from area of the volcano, special spicy salami, lavender soap and body wash I bought for mom. Actually, my husband told me that if  I used it once at home he will kill me because it is very intensively aromatic. Hope my dad won´t hate me when my mom open it :-D

I have to admit that I really enjoyed this holiday, no cooking, active resting and the atmosphere of the lake gave us feeling as if we were by the sea. One day I will for sure come back there. So … bye,  bye lake Balaton, I will miss you!!! 

View from the volcano

Happy kids on the beach

Keszthely - castle and garden

Siofok - symbol of the city - Water tower

Siofok - view from the tower

My art picture m proud of

The rest I will upload later here in my album.. thanx for reading it ;-)