Hungary - Siofok

Due to the late night on Tuesday, Wednesday got started later than we had planned. In fact, Roland had a case of insomnia and didn't get to sleep until almost 4:00 in the morning, so he was exhausted. I woke up and was down at the restaurant for breakfast at around 9:45 in the morning. The plan was for Csilla and Roland to call me when they were walking out the door and I'd get up and head downstairs at that time, but I didn't want to waste any time on such a beautiful morning, so I grabbed my soccer magazine left message with the person working at the front desk, and waited at the restaurant, drinking some tea and trying to tell the waiter that I was going to wait for them to get there before I ate. After about 45 minutes though, I wasn't sure if they would ever recover from the previous night's escapade, so I went ahead and ordered some food - scrambled eggs with some ham.

About a half hour after I had finished eating, Csilla arrived and gave me a look with a small smirk on her face. They hadn't planned on sleeping in so late, but the night was long and the draining of the previous day took it's toils on us, so it was excusable. Once Roland arrived, they ordered breakfast and I ordered a couple of Hungarian sausages to turn my breakfast into brunch.

Before we could depart for Siofok (say: She-oh-foke), there were errands that had to be run for the hotel. So after breakfast/brunch, I headed back to the hotel to pack and they headed out to get some supplies for the hotel, since we were going to be gone for a few days.

Once those were done, it was off to Siofok - this time I was sitting in the back seat. I seem to bring bad luck with Roland whenever I ride shotgun. I was riding shotgun in Bratislava the day before when the accident happened. And I was riding shotgun the first time I visited Budapest when Roland got into almost an identical accident, also caused by a sudden lane change. I won't forget that accident. After colliding with an SUV, we both pulled over and Roland got out to talk to the driver of the other car. He said some stuff in Hungarian and the guy stopped, looked directly at me and said "Do you speak English?" The way that the guy did it was funny to me, I won't forget it. In any case, we had only hit the other guy's tire and there was damage to his car, just to Roland's. So, no more shotgun riding for me, I was only going to be a backseat driver from that point on.

The ride to Siofok was an interesting one, a lot of the drive was on a narrow, two-lane road that had a lot of traffic on it. Normally that means that you have to slow down and drive carefully, but in Hungary, that means that you have to drive faster and pass more people in a hurry. Roland had told me about accidents that he had had on that road, which made the drive that much more comforting, especially when we made a wrong turn onto the wrong freeway, after which he proceeded to carefully drive in reverse on the on-ramp to get back on track. I had no fear - I was sitting in the back seat. So, if we were driving backwards, and I was in the back seat......I guess I had reason to fear after all. But everything turned out fine and we were Siofok-bound again.

I had heard all about Siofok and Lake Balaton, the largest lake in Europe before. This town was well known around Central Europe and had a Cancun/Daytona Beach Spring Break/Ibiza-type reputation. It was home to two of the largest discos in all of Hungary (Palace and Flürt), a multitude or restaurants, a thriving waterfront atmosphere complete with club music being pumped through speakers, elevated go-go dancers at the waterside bars, an armada of floating islands with music and parties that you had to swim to, waterfront clubs (Renegade), dancing, and sunbathing, human-sized foosball games, trampolines, sardine-packed beaches, sidewalks and cafes packed full of people, and other such things. So clearly my expectations for these two days put a smile on my face :o).

We arrived in town at around 4:00 and we were greeted by shuttered shops and restaurants, no traffic, and Main Street parking places. Arriving in late Summer, Roland knew that it could be a questionable atmosphere since many schools were in session already. But we couldn't have imagined it being THIS dead! There was literally no one around! Heading to the water, we found empty fields, closed bars, beached floating islands, only the pulsating club music purring forth from speakers remained. Having never experienced a crazy Spring Break-like atmosphere and never having been at Siofok before, it wasn't too bad for me, though I could only imagine what it would be like with so many people around. But Roland and Csilla were nearly speechless, as they'd been there many times before and had never imagined it could be so quiet.

Though we were down about the atmosphere, we decided to camp our bodies on some beach loungechairs nonetheless and catch some sun while it remained in the sky. By this time, it was closer to 5:00 in the evening and the lake had turned to glass. It was so pristine that we couldn't possibly come to grips with jumping in and unsettling the giant mass of water in front of us. Well, that and the fact that the water was freezing cold.

We had relaxed a bit by this point, so we decided to wander down to the one shack that was still open that was serving up snacks and some tasty beverages. Csilla dined on some epic sausages that she couldn't stop raving about and I munched on a few cinammon-sugar-filled crepes. We had really relaxed by this point and before we knew it, we had started to enjoy the quiet atmosphere and being able to share it with good friends like this made it quite special. We wouldn't be deterred from having fun as long as we enjoyed each-others' company, and we certainly were doing that.

Once the sun had receded into the western corner of the lake, we packed up and moved out. We had to find a residence for the night, and that wouldn't be a problem with such an empty city. We struck gold on a two bedroom pension that cost us $40 each a night. It came replete with a living room, kitchen, and a full bathroom. This place was a steal, so we unpacked, cleaned up, and headed out to dinner. We found a restaurant to check out and Roland and Csilla decided that I needed to have a real fish soup, so I ordered it again. This fish soup was also awesome tasting, but unfortunately the carp inside it was high maintenance and had too many bones, so I stopped eating it once Roland and Csilla had finished half of their entree before I had even started mine.

After dinner, we had some time to kill before going to the Flürt so we went down to an arcade area that was crawling with German tourists from the club/bar upstairs. Roland pony'd up some coins and it was battle time-Air-hockey, darts, and some other battle game challenges. We spent a few hours there while checking out the characters outside the club before we headed out of the tourist area towards the real clubs.

As we were walking out of town, there was a group of guys at an outdoor cafe and two guys on the street pushing each other. Sweet, drunk fighting! One guy couldn't hardly stand up, and the other guy was clearly in a better position. The more sober of the two hit the other guy and he fell like a lead brick onto his back. I have never seen someone fall like that before. He was going to have some bruises the next day, that's for sure.

After hiking for twenty minutes, we found out Flürt was closed for the season. So there we were, twenty minutes outside of town on a dead road at 1:00 in the morning. We decided we would take a taxi to Palace because we had seen signs for "Frei Bier and Sangria until 3:00am" and they had a free shuttle that ran back into town every hour. As we were waiting for a taxi, we saw the shuttle go flying by like a bat out of hell, so we ran and flagged it down, and we were whisked off several kilometers away to the Palace mega-complex.

This place had multiple levels, outdoor discos, restaurants, everything! They had lounges, Latin music, trance music, etc. - but not tonight. We were very disappointed to find out that only the lounge had music, and we walked in there to the sound of the Grease soundtrack, not exactly what I had in mind for the evening. Very disappointing. The following weekend there was going to be a grand-finale, two-day party at the club, but not during the week. Bummer.

After some visual entertainment, we went to the lounge area, which wasn't really loungy, and danced for a while while trying to avoid the spilled sangria everywhere. We actually had a fun time in the lounge as the music became a bit more festive than Grease! But we had to go home soon, so we caught the bus home at 4:00am to avoid the rush of people leaving at 5, when it closed. Once we got home, we chilled out on the patio at the apartment and listened to the trains coming into town. Glad that I had the room on the other side of the apartment ;o) !!