David's Blog

Lake Balaton is one of the biggest lakes in Europe. You can see the other side, but it's pretty far, a lot like Lake Tahoe. For a land locked country like Hungary, this is the only option for going to the beach. It's a popular destination for Hungarian tourists and also Germans and Austrians. Lots of little restaurants with mostly German food and beer. There are several towns along the lake. This one is called "Balatonalmadi" which sounds a lot like where Borat is from. "Hello, my name eh Borat, I from Balatonalmadi". The only big hotel there is a Ramada. You can't miss it. It's 10 stories high, which makes it roughly 8 stories higher than any other building in town. It's right next to the train tracks and the beach. Nice hotel. Nice indoor swimming pool.
It's 80 miles away from Budapest but the train ride was 3 hours. That's pretty darn slow. It didn't stop often, but when it stopped, it just sat there. At one point I wondered if I was supposed to get off. It was boiling hot and there was no air conditioning. The black seats didn't help in the heat dissipation department. Sweat just poured out. The train was empty enough that I could sit wherever happened to be the shadiest. My friend biked there and wasn't much slower. On the way back, with all the waiting and the metro ride from the train station, I was only 20 minutes faster than a bicycle.

Labels: hungary

Posted by David on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 2:57 PM | Share this post on:   facebook   del.icio.us   digg   StumbleUpon     | Permalink