Lake Balaton In Trouble

In spite of the crowd of young visitors, the owner, Sandor Barna, complains that "the business is exhausted" - though he opened a week ago Palace - a Hundert Wasser style disco with a pranky cover of

But at the tables one can chose from 24 kinds of huge pizzas cooked on genuine wood fire from ft. 200-400. If you listen to Gyuri Horvath complains, the manager of the place, that business is not good enough, that they lost their Hungarian customers, and that he got tired of seeing the dozens of articles in the newspapers saying that at Balaton things go wrong, you won't make it for their Erotic bar to enjoy the full of humor show of their stripteuse, named Tracy. Some like it fat and funny, there she is, sacrificing her boyfriend for a job that brings her 2,000 ft a night ($10). She prefers work at Palace since escorting customers is not compulsory here, she said.

From choices endless, one might be a four star hotel such as Hotel Familia Zamardi on the Road 70, at the gas station. There you can even get married for besides 52 air conditioning rooms, heated swimming pool, sauna, a resident doctor, physico-therapy, restaurant, drink bar, tennis playground, there is a chapel where wedding ceremonies can proceed.

As to the food, you don't have to worry. The Chef knows how to make you happy with a plate of country steak or loin steak a la Cecilia garnished with a melange of colorful vegetables resembling a Flemish painting.

The sophisticated architecture melts as butter in your mouth while the dressing's flavor tickles your nostrils with its picantery.

The genuine politeness of the personnel won't tell you nothing about their inner worries. Under the hotel managing director Laszle Ferenczi's kind smile unsatisfied thoughts roam. His colleagues, instead of advertising jointly, suffer of local patriotism.

"Nobody would come to visit Balaton just for one place. If they know that they can see more things around and not get stuck into one place, they will come happily. Why can't we advertise in areas, not the whole Balaton, but let's say the surroundings of Siofok, or other areas?".

In the middle of this market a brass band plays while horse riders pass by towards the small village of 12 houses next to the stands. Under the thatched roofs of the seemingly houses from the beginning of century, you can live in apartments of two bedrooms, a living room in genuine rustic style, with modernized utilities, including telephone and satellite. This is The Kocsis Csarda, a combination of hotel and horse riding club.

Besides riding their horses are used in their folkloric programs such as peasant weddings or trips in the puszta with horse carriage riding.

Guests are brought by carts, served some palinka, then invited to dance and eat the gulyas from a small 'boglar'- a bowl. They can enjoying the folk band and dancers from Transylvania, while waiters dressed in Hungarian folk costumes go around with food and drink. The staff girls put fire, competing in making the eaters to have the biggest graze of their life.

They want to succeed in staffing the people until explosion: for 36 DM tourists can eat as much as they want and can. Kids consummation is free.

Until the kebab with garlic and red wine is cooked, the Hungarischen bananen -literally hot pepper - is passed around. The mascote of the place, Spangli the lamb, is begging for its bread. The waiters are adamant about the drinking of red and white wine carafes. "If there is no good atmosphere before the kebab, we are the guilty ones," said Janos Hausman, Kocsis Csarda staff." If we still don't succeed after it, then they are the guilty ones. Usually by midnight they jump on the tables, and dance csardas. They let themselves loose, it's not as in a restaurant."

Grown up people go around in a chain, while crouching, aerobic csardas, while children fall on the ground and it's a big adventure for everybody. Here you have mosquitoes and flies, so that asking for a toothpick in the bosom of nature may be taken as a good joke. No light, for the dim candle light is very useful to built up romance, or to straighten some relationships verging on monotony. "Before divorcing, think to check us!" is the motto of the company. After kebab couples hand in hand disappear in the darkness and the bushes, or reeds, or hay stacks start to whisper love words, the child's run around, nobody has to discipline them. They just marvel at their parents changed behavior that sing with full lungs tunes from "The Csardas' Queen" operetta.

mouth for Geza the csikkos is around and he'll reply: " Why poor? He's working as I do. What if we don't use a saddle? That's our tradition since Attila. Csikkos, the Gaucho hero of the puszta after whom we took our
name, didn't have time to put a saddle when he was in
a hurry and this it wasn't considered manly either."

On your way back home, while on ferryboat, the warm hearted words of the people who take care of your holiday in Balaton, twinkle in your ears. "I can't imagine myself without plenty of people around me, "I love guests, all winter I sob, 'Oh, may the summer come quicker so that I, poor Janos Hausman, should see more people around me.'"

An edited, unrecognizable version of it was printed in
The Budapest Sun, May 12-16, 1994