Tac, Balaton (I), and Bory Castle

Towards the end of the year, usually in the last week or two, most of the classes in my school took a trip of some sort together. A lot of them just did day trips, to a water park or the zoo or some famous site in Hungary. I was invited along on my eighth grade's overnight trip to Lake Balaton, and these are the pictures I have to prove it.

First on our trip we made a stop at current day Tac, which was the Roman city of Gorsium. According to the Google Translated version of the Wikipedia page on Gorsium, it was founded in the 3rd century.

The structural remains of the old market place and city center. I believe that below the red line is the original stone.

Google Translate says, "Farmer/Collector Important". So.

Fresco.

Nymphaea Fountain, I think.

Theater, stage and seats. 

Then we moved on to Lake Balaton in the afternoon! We stayed in Balatonszemes, a small port along the southern side of Balaton Lake.  

I'm not sure if these pictures really portray how windy and cold it was on the water. Disappointingly so, I must say.

Aw, class photo!

I don't want to say that I was hoping these guys would fall in due to making this terrible decision... but I little bit hoped they would fall in.

This is when I decided I did not want to be standing on the end of this pier anymore.

Well hello, Hungarian audiophile!

As soon as I saw this sad, broken down looking "fair" (I hesitate to sincerely give it that name since it was this ride and a bumper car arena behind it), I knew my 8th graders would be visiting.

But first, a marathon volley ball game.

So proud of Csilla and her killer serve!

Tom being intense.

Aaaaand... bumper cars. 

Grid lock. Typical! 

I was told this is a traditional Hungarian well recreation. 

Some shots of the nearby park. 

The next day we ate some breakfast and then some lunch, drank a bunch of coffee, and headed off to Székesfehérvár, to see Bory Castle. The castle was built by Jenő Bory, according to Wikipedia and this sign I found, by his own hands,  for 40 years, in the mid-20th century. I loved this place, and probably could have spent another 2 hours just wandering around and discovering strange little architectural details. Alas, 8th graders are impatient, short attention-spanned beings who couldn't do more than 45 minutes here. But it's a really interesting hodgepodge of architectural influences (I feel like I saw definite Romanesque, Gothic/Neogothic, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Baroque, Egyptian, Victorian, etc in there).

Art gallery inside.

Anonymous.

Glorious kings and queens of Hungary's past.

  

  

Utter randomness in a way that I truly enjoyed. All in all, a weird but interesting (at times?) Friday/Saturday. Except for the massive headache I got on Friday night. Too much coffee, I suspect. Otherwise, good times!