The Lake Trip

"The Lake Trip"

Lake Balaton

One I absolutely love the name of this post. For some reason I feel like it gives this story such a dramatic feel! Anyways my first weekend studying abroad I went on a trip to Lake Balaton, which is a small resort town in Hungary only a few hours away from Budapest. 

The night before going to Lake Balaton a bunch of us went to Zsofia's (Steve's tandem partners) house and then went to a place called Budapest Park, where there was a concert type thing going on. It was such a random and fun night, and in the morning I was woken up for my trip to Lake Balaton from everyone else just getting home! 

Zsofia, Joe, and I at Budapest Park

Honestly I had no idea what to expect when I signed up for this Lake trip, but Emily told me it was one of her favorite trips so I knew I had to go. We went with ESN, the on-campus international group. Alison, Radhika, Therese, Claudia, Robert, Stephen, and yours truly were the only ISP people who I knew going on the trip. This trip was just so cool. 

Our first stop on the trip was to the Lake itself, where we cruised around on a boat and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. After we all enjoyed lunch in the main part of town. Then we all hopped back on the bus to go to our hostel and played some "ice-breakers". The ice-breakers were actually hilarious, the ESN leaders came up with some weird games to get us all to know each other better. The best part of these games was getting to know people from different countries, like Tamas from Hungary and Steffi from Germany! 

After we were done with the ice-breakers we got back on the bus, to go to a winery! This was literally one of the coolest things I think I have ever done. As we walked into the winery we got a welcome shot of Paulinka, which is the Hungarian form of vodka made from fruit instead of grain (it's awful trust me). Then the fun part started, the wine tasting. We were in a cellar and got to taste three different types of wines from the winery and just kept shouting "Every Bus Drink Fast". For dinner we had unlimited wine and amazing food, fun fact I never ended up eating the food because the wine was just too good to put down...

The next day we all went to the largest thermal lake in Hungary called Tofurdo. It was such a relaxing day after all the wine the night before. We just lounged around in the thermal lake all day. The cool thing about the thermal lake is that it makes you pretty much weightless, so you just float around the whole time. Only thing I didn't like about the thermal lake was that it smelled really funky, but that was because of the natural minerals. 

Thermal Lake

For my first trip studying abroad I could not have asked for more. I really feel like I'm getting used to this whole Hungary place being my home for four months. More too come from Budapest---Szia!