Lake Balaton - Hungary

Trip Start Oct 30, 2007
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Trip End Nov 20, 2009


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Flag of Hungary  , Lake Balaton,
Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Further north to Lake Balaton in central Hungary, known for its wine as well, as well as the hordes of people that 'relax' by the lake.  We spent a few days here, though, to be honest, although it is a nice setting, it got more tourists (including it's fair share of Germans) than it really deserved.  Wasn't really helped by these freak weather patterns they have there in summer, where they get 80km/h winds, and there's flashing beacons everywhere to tell everyone it's quite windy (in case one hadn't noticed!).  We mainly came for the wine festivals at the end of July which were great (mainly little stalls with the winemakers selling glasses of their wines for about 50c a glass!) and in some areas it was really mainly locals.  It was also a great place to go out on the lash............goulash that is! 

We stopped by a reserve of Hungarian 'bison', which while we had no clue they actually had bison in Hungary, looked remarkably similar to slightly more hairy versions of the water buffalo we'd seen everywhere in Asia.  We did try a few words of Thai on them, but they just looked at us blankly - they must have been a bit rusty in the language department!

We also went to the Herend factory, which is the largest manufacturer of hand-made porcelain (plates, cups, statues etc) in the world.  They make settings used by the Royal Family and other such people with similar bank balances.  Incredible to see someone spend almost 3 days painting one plate, and though it was a hard call, we decided not to buy the $25,000 dinner set for the van.  We thought it might look a little ostentatious?
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