Hullám Hostel in Hungary – Lake Balaton days

When travelling with our teenagers, we often choose a private room in a stylish and family-friendly hostel over an apartment or hotel, which is how we came to select Hullám Hostel in Révfülöp for our stay in the Lake Balaton area of Hungary. This way we got the best of both worlds with an an en suite room, lively atmosphere, other travellers to talk to and free wifi for our kids to get their daily fix of Facebook (and Mum to keep up the blog).

I researched the hostels around the shores of Lake Balaton to use as a base for our holiday in this area, and from everything I read, the northern shore of the lake, with it’s historic towns and villages,vineyards and castles sounded more our scene, whereas the resorts on the southern shore are more devoted to package tourists and busy nightlife.

The other thing I was wary of in Eastern Europe, is of finding accommodation with that dreary ex-communist feel, with old fashioned fittings that were probably considered chic by the party faithful in their 70s heyday. Not so at Hullám Hostel in Révfülöp which I saw described as a boutique hostel and seemed to get excellent reports and reviews.

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When we drew up in our hire car, having driven down from Budapest, we didn’t have a great start, as someone had obviously stayed a little longer than planned in our room and so they proposed to move us down the road for one night to alternative holiday accommodation and move us back in the morning once our room was free. As the other accommodation epitomised that dreary 70s decor, I was a little bit grumpy that evening, but once we had settled in to Hullám Hostel the next day, things started to look up.

Révfülöp is a pleasant small resort town by the lake and from here you can get ferries over to the southern shore, do some fishing or sailing or swim from the club-style lakeside swimming area. From the hostel it was only 5 minutes to walk across the road and over the railway bridge to the lake where there were a number of open air bars and cafes catering for summer holiday visitors.

The Hullám hostel is set in an old building beside the main road that runs down the length of the lake and parallel to the train track that will take you to Budapest in one direction and to the western end of the lake in the other. The old building had obviously been gutted and remodelled to make it into a hostel with white walls and colourful accents of burnt orange and green, with funky murals in the reception area and parts of the exterior, and a proliferation of inexpensive but well designed IKEA style fittings.

We learned later that the hostel was designed by Dora Berkes, a friend of the owners, with bright paintings, murals and tiles throughout. She also designed the Grand Hostel Budapest in similar style and is known for her Raypainting.  Not sure what Raypainting is? Me neither, but I discovered that it’s the painting of well known buildings with projected light paintings, normally for special celebration days. Dora’s online portfolio shows some amazing examples of her Raypaintings from Berlin, Vienna and Budapest.

In the large garden at the back of the hostel, there is a second building with more rooms and I believe some rooms that are suitable for families on the top floor. The garden was a fantastic space to relax, with space for children to run around, a table tennis table that our kids loved using and wooden sculptures and enclosures made from willows bent into shapes, and a hammock under the trees. We also saw a few guests who were camping there in small tents on some nights.

We had specifically asked for a quiet room that was en suite if possible, and our room was perfect – and was worth waiting the extra day until we could get into it. They joked that they were giving us the ‘Presidential suite’ as this was the best room in the house. It was a family room with a double bed and bunk beds with an en suite shower room, although the kids had a separate small room with twin beds next door and used our bathroom. On the same corridor there were other dorm rooms and a girls and boys bathrooms next door to each other.

The hostel is really designed for warm summer days and only opens in the spring through to autumn, as there is no heating and no indoor sitting room that we saw, but everyone sat in the covered bar area that was open to the road at the front and adjoining the garden at the back. There was a very small kitchen in a wooden lean-to with just a sink and two ring burner, but the hostel got around this by cooking up a one pot stew every evening that almost everyone ate, as it was so delicious and cheap. At weekends, there is often live music in the bar area and for the National Holiday of St Stephen’s day, there was a local jazz band playing all the swingtime favourites.

The best things about the Hullám hostel was the relaxed atmosphere with good humoured and helpful staff who seemed to be a loosely connected group of friends, cousins and extended family of the owners, who would bring their children and babies along with them.  Although most of the guests were an international backbacker crowd in their 20s, there was definitely a very welcoming atmosphere for families too.

We had some great chats with Zoli, one of the co-owners and Artur who was working there for the summer season, both of whom spoke excellent English and gave us lots of information about the area. Every evening we sat around in the bar to the sounds of jazz and world music, playing cards and chatting to other travellers from the UK and using the free wifi in the bar area to catch up with things online.

The weather in the summer in the area is pleasantly warm, with the odd shower or thunderstorm to cool things down, and so it was great to sit and relax outside, although I suspect that outside the main summer months the lack of an indoor sitting room might have been more of an issue.

Every day we ate the stew that was cooked up in the big Hungarian cooking pot – one day it was Hungarian goulash, another cabbage and bacon with sour cream, served with slices of bread, and you could go back and help yourself to seconds, all in the price of 1000 HUF ($5, €3.60, £3) a head, which saved us trying to cook.

We had hired a car to drive down from Budapest which takes 2-3 hours, depending on the traffic (the roads around Lake Balaton area get very busy on summer weekends). The alternative was to reach the hostel by train from Budapest and we met some travellers at the hostel who had done this, although it had taken them the best part of a day to get there. Once at the hostel you could get around by train or bus that went up and down the side of the lake, stopping at other resorts and you could hire bikes at the hostel., to explore the immediate area.

The hostel is well placed for shops and provisions and bang next door there was a wonderful fruit and vegetable shop where we admired the piles of  glossy red and yellow peppers and bought our favourite watermelon.  Then there was a small supermarket, with a wine merchant’s at the front that stayed open into the evening after the main shop had closed. These were literally next door, but 5 minutes up the road there was a slightly larger supermarket and a few other shops

While we were at Hullám Hostel we enjoyed exploring the area on the northern shore of Lake Balaton, visiting the castle at Szigliget with wonderful views over the lake from the battlements and tried the sour cherry soup in the picturesque village of Salföld with its traditional whitewashed and thatched houses. On another day we wandered around the gardens of the Festetics palace at  Keszthely, tried the coffee and cakes at the marzipan museum and floated around in the waterlilies in the thermal lake at Hévíz.

On our last day we decided to bond with the lake and took the ferry across to the resort of Balatonboglar on the other side, where the crowds were out for the fun fair on the national holiday of St Stephen’s day. It was all a bit brash and busy and after a couple of hours we were glad to escape back to the more peaceful northern shore.

We decided that Hullám Hostel was definitely the sort of place where you might arrive for a day or two and end up staying a week – we just loved the style and the atmosphere of the place, and especially the super helpful Zoli and the rest of the crew. If want to visit the Lake Balaton area or get out of Budapest to relax for a few days, we highly recommend Hullam Hostel as a great place to stay while you explore the area.

Get the info

• Hullám Hostel, Révfülöp, Lake Balaton, Hungary email: [email protected]
• Prices for private rooms range from $20 per person/night for a 4 person shared room to €45 for a single en suite room. Prices for dorms are €13-17 per person per night (Guide prices from the hostel website)
• The hostel also welcomes group bookings and can arrange guides and transport in the local area.
• The hostel is open from March to October
• Book Hullam Hostel, Lake Balaton, Hungary with Hostelbookers.com

More tales from Lake Balaton

Hungarian goulash and other one pot cooking
Thermal springs and rubber rings at Hévíz – in Hungary
Sour cherry soup at Salföld in Hungary

This article is originally published at Heatheronhertravels.com

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