The Hungarian Sea
"Not far from Budapest, in a green and smiling landscape, wreathed by vine-clad hills, lies a wide blue lake, the largest in all Central Europe. It is called Lake Balaton..."
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From When I Was a Girl in Hungary by Elizabeth Pongracz Jacobi, 1930.
Not far from Budapest, in a green and smiling landscape, wreathed by vine-clad hills, lies a wide blue lake, the largest in all Central Europe. It is called Lake Balaton. Every Hungarian child who has not seen it has heard songs and stories about it. A summer at Lake Balaton, “the Hungarian Sea,” means all the joys that a seaside summer means to an American child.
So when, one day in early summer, Uncle Doctor declared that I looked rather green, and that a lakeside holiday would do me all the good in the world, I almost “wriggled out of my skin with joy,” as our saying goes. I was sorry to miss Eörs, but a Balaton vacation promised new and unheard-of pleasures.
We pitched our tent in one of the many small resorts by the lake. Boglar, like most of the small communities near Balaton, boasted of no great luxuries at the time. There were only two or three larger resorts with comfortable hotels. At Boglar we rented a peasant cottage, Borcsa cooked our meals, and we took turns in getting fresh water from the spring. There was a tiny garden full of old-world flowers on the hillside behind the house. I shall never forget how, after arriving late one night, I climbed the hill in the morning, and got my first view of the enormous expanse of glittering blue water. Tiny white sails and drifted on it in the distance, and the square, coffin-shaped height of Mount Badacsony, once a volcano, loomed far away, on the opposite shore.
But Balaton did not always look so calm and blue as it did that morning. Storms are very sudden on that wide, unprotected sheet of water. Each year the lake claims the sacrifice of human lives.
Every morning we went down to the sandy beach for a swim in the shallow, sun-warmed water. Then the boys would push out the boat they had hired, and row us out upon the calm lake.
Every time when Papa left us after spending the week-end at Boglar, he made the boys promise not to go too far, and never to start if there was the slightest sign of a storm coming.
But really the lake looked as innocently blue as a calm pool on the hot morning when, as we were going to get our canoe from Uncle Somogyi the boat-keeper, he told us:
“Better not go out this morning. There’s a storm coming.”
“Nonsense, Uncle Somogyi,” Maria said. “Why, the lake is perfectly calm, and there isn’t a breath of wind. We want to row across to Badacsony.”
“That you won’t do, Miss,” Uncle Somogyi declared, with the utmost calm. He sat down on our upturned canoe and looked as if no power on earth could ever remove him.
“But Uncle Somogyi,” Elemer remonstrated, the water is as smooth as a glass, and the meteorological report says a prolonged calm and warm weather...”
“I don’t care for no ‘metology,’” Uncle Somogyi said. “The lake looks a nasty, glassy green down by Szigliget, and if I tell you there’s going to be a storm, well, then there is. And punctum!”
We were going to remonstrate, but Elemer, always the wisest among us, whose lead we followed in everything, declared: “Well, I suppose Uncle Somogyi knows best. We’ll row across to-morrow. Let’s get our fishing-lines instead. I want to land a fogas for dinner.”
Hardly had I fetched our cherished pail of worms from the garden and settled down to our angling on the steep bank when we noticed that the color of the lake was suddenly turning to a dark, angry green. Great white-crested breakers came racing towards the shore, although there was no wind and the sun was still shining brightly.
Before five minutes had elapsed the sky was covered with a grey film. Suddenly there came a squall that almost carried me off my feet. The lake was roaring with great waves that threatened to carry the boat-house off its creaking rafters.
Uncle Somogyi crossed himself.
“God have mercy on those who are out to-day,” he said. Then all at once he gazed intently at a distant point of the lake. We watched, too, and there w r as a white speck on the dark, roaring waters—different from the cataracts of foam on the wave-crests.
“A sail!” he cried. But Uncle Somogyi was down at the boat-house already, tugging at the chain that bound our canoe. A moment later Elemer was beside him. He was a strong boy, a good oarsman and capital swimmer, and for all the wise caution he used in looking after us, he did not know what fear meant.
Before we realized what was happening, the two were off, struggling desperately against the waves that were still going high, although the hurricane had decreased in strength. The sailing-boat was in a worse plight than a rowboat would be. Evidently the inexperienced sailors, sensing no sign of the oncoming storm, could not strip in time. We watched breathlessly. Elemer and the old boat-keeper could hardly make any headway. The sail disappeared, turned up again, then we lost sight of it. The canoe toiled on, fighting its way towards the point where we had last seen the sail.
An anxious hour followed. The wind abated, the lake calmed down as suddenly as the storm had come. Balaton was blue again, calm, smiling, innocent.
An hour later, the small rescue party returned. They were drenched, weary, and depressed. I had never seen Elemer so tired as he was after that desperate useless fight with the lake. We took Uncle Somogyi home with us and gave him a drink of hot red Badacsony wine to warm him.
“There was not a trace of her to be seen far and wide,” he told us. “Nothing except a bit of broken mast. Surely they were visitors at Füred, gone for a sail without asking any one who knows Balaton. You’ve got to know Balaton, or pay the price,” he said, staring in front of him with eyes that surely had seen many similar tragedies before he, too, had learned “to know Balaton.”
We all looked upon Uncle Somogyi as an oracle after that. I used to go down to the boat-house of an afternoon while he mended the big net which he used to take trailing after his boat when he went out fishing after sundown. I never tired of questioning him about his experiences of the lake.
“You should see Balaton in winter, Missie, when we have no city visitors,” he told me. “When all the lake is one sheet of ice, and the wind catches the sails of our sleigh, and away we go! I’d make you wooden dogs—wouldn’t you like that? ”
“Oh, I should just love it!” I declared, with enthusiasm. “Only I’m not quite sure...what are wooden dogs?”
“The small one-seater sleighs which you push along with two long sticks, used on Balaton, Missie. Then we have fires on the ice, and you should just see the fishing! We cut big square openings in the ice, and lower the nets through them. Then when we pull them up, there are hundreds of fogas for you! ”
I gazed ruefully at my fishing-line which I used to hold patiently for hours without catching as much as a little sullo. Somehow the fish always managed to get my worms without being caught on my hook.
Jacobi, Elizabeth Pongracz. When I Was a Girl in Hungary. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1930.
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