Riding bikes

Today, for the first time this year, it really felt like spring!

And it's not only the temperature outside.
A short chat to Chloe in the morning helped me realise certain things and now the winter chill is gone from my heart and stomach, welcoming the sun and the warmth with arms wide open.

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We rented bikes in the morning and had a great plan of going to the Balaton lake. 

We did as we planned, just that we also decided  on a "small" detour, first visiting Sümeg - a small town around 30 km away from Hévíz - famous for its castle and knight tournaments.

Luckily, the weather was beautiful and we could enjoy the ride. Well, we could and we couldn't - there was loads of sun, true, but there was even more wind, which made it almost impossible to ride at times. Combined with the hilly area, it basically killed us. I know that kind of a distance shouldn't be too much for any fit person, but it got pretty damn' hard at times.

We stopped at a small grocery in the first little town we go to. I had just paid for my snack when the store owner asked me something in Hungarian. After seeing my face expression, he quickly switched to German. By the way, it's truly amazing - everyone speaks at least the basics of German in here but almost no or literally no English. You know how in Asia every white person is American? Well, in the Balaton area every non Hungarian is apparently German. So anyways, he saw I couldn't understand him, so he left the counter and walked up to a box where the apples were displayed, only to choose 4 and give me two of them saying: "Fur dich" , and then the other two: "Fur deine Kollegin" pointing to Reni waiting outside. How cute is that?

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Already before leaving the hotel we knew there wouldn't be any tournament, as they start later in spring, but Reni seemed really interested in the castle, so we were praying it be worth it. What can I tell you... As soon as we found out we'd have to pay 4 euro to take a walk around it, we agreed it was a castle like any other ;) The only thing worth mentioning was the howling we heard once we reached the castle gate. We were already on our way back to the bikes but decided to take some Bee pics and that's when we realised there were two wolves up the castle's walls. Pretty cool stuff.

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It was quite a battle with our minds and bodies to get back on the bikes. At first we thought we might take a train all the way to Keszthely, the lake town we wanted to reach, but it turned out we had just missed it and would have to wait an hour for the next one. Adding that to the hour it would take the train to get there, we decided it was better to be on the move and make use of the bikes we were so excited about just a couple of hours beforehand. So we set off again, hoping it would be easier this way around. 

And it was! The wind was almost gone, the sun in our faces, unfortunately the hills still there... But most of the way was downhill this time, so we managed to arrive in Kesztheley in a pretty decent time. The cool part is, there's a railway station just by the entrance to the lake area and  a train pulled in just as we were getting there. I'm pretty sure they don't run too many trains in the area, so it was the one we would have taken, had we stayed and waited in Sümeg.

Unfortunately though, it was getting colder and colder, the sunlight was also not the best for pictures any more. 

We took a couple of shots, stared at the swans gracefully cutting through the water surface and rode back to our hotel. It was merely 6:30 pm but we could feel tonight wouldn't be a most eventful one. 

Actually, I was pretty sure I'd be long asleep by now (11:17pm). All we had planned for the evening was dinner and then a sauna/jacuzzi time. We were also laughing that 2 days in this town made some changes in our psyche and we were getting too similar to Hévíz's target market, i.e. 60+ retired Germans: barely walking, tired by 6:30pm, asleep by 9pm... It's a good thing we're leaving first thing tomorrow morning then - time to get some energy back and Budapest is the perfect spot for that!