Marshall in Strange Places: Summer Trips: Balaton

The days are getting shorter, the dark is coming earlier – this is the time of year when Hungary starts looking like Mordor, and so my mind goes to brighter times during the summer.

Lake Balaton is like Hungary’s backyard pool. Oh, and it’s a big one – the largest lake in central Europe, and some even affectionately called Hungary’s sea.

It’s where you go in the summer to lay in the sun, splash around and eat fish soup and langos by the shore. It’s like Toronto’s modest cottage country, but much different at the same time because you hear far more foreign languages around its shores. While it might be Hungary’s backyard pool, throughout the Cold War it was one of the few places where families from East and West Germany could reunite. This is why among all those foreign languages you hear a lot of German.

Lake Balaton is a special place and, unlike Toronto's cottage country it's a little easier to get to, even for a day, thanks to great train schedules.

I went there twice this past summer. The first time was to the north shore with Kata. Our train dropped us at Balatonfured, which is nice, but little touristy. We took a dip in the water and splashed around, ate some langos and walked along the shore in the evening.

Oh, by the way, langos is a Hungarian specialty: deep-fried bread with cheese and sour cream. Freakin' delicious.

We took a bus to Tihany, a town which sits on a peninsula that stretches into the lake. It's off the beaten path, so the pace is a little more relaxed here but it's not too far away from everything. We walked up into the hills, where there’s an old church and a beautiful panorama.

We came back down the hill and took a swim in the lake, accidently going onto a private beach. This forbidden beach had only a handful of people on it, compared to the hundreds at Balatonfured, and it was plain, simple pretty.

Before making our way back to Balatonfured for the train to Budapest, we stopped for some birthday fish soup, a tradition created at that moment.

The next trip to Lake Balaton took a few friends and I to Siofok, which sits on the south shore. Siofok feels less like the more chill north shore and more like a beach town. There are the muscle-y dudes, ladies in bikinis, and a strip near the beach with night clubs.

What draws them to Siofok is the beach, which has a sand bar that stretches far out from the shore. On the beach, or in the water, you're away from all the Fort Lauderdale types, so all that junk onshore doesn't matter much. We lay in the sun, we swam, and, yes, drank beer and ate langos.

I forgot to mention how close Balaton is to Budapest, like an hour or so. So that day we spent at Siofok, we all met at the train station in the morning and, after a hearty meal, we piled back onto a train and rode back to Budapest in the evening. I sleep pretty well on trains, so I usually look like the below shot when I am traveling by train after a day at Balaton.

Kata took better photos then me at Tihany, so all the photos below are hers.