Balatonalmádi | The First Memory

The first memory settled permanently, just as birds do, where it originated from. Although it is the nature of memories that they are interconnected, they merge together, get new colours and in the end their owner does not know where, when and in what way they were created.
My own memory began in Balatonszabadi-Sóstó and has not moved from there for half a century eversince. A small two-platform, double-rail station, a little, reed-lined pond, a medium-wave transmitter station and, of course, a free public beach awaited the visitors there. Also, at dusk, a refrigerated vehicle rolled in selling frozen blue plums from one-pound bags, which we loved, because they were cheaper than ice cream. In the crowded and dusty campsite of the settlement the primary school of my village built its own tent camp using supplies obtained from the military. Since then Sóstó has been a part of Siófok, bounded by the M7 motorway from the south, and the pond has gone. But a monument was built there and it still stands today, and if once it took a long day’s journey from the Great Hungarian Plain to reach this holiday resort, now all you need is a breeze smelling of water or a plum-blue parasol. Most of the time I talk (didactically and in a moralistic way) about my history as having merely two eras, one before and one after the first holiday I spent on Lake Balaton, which holiday (morning wake-up call, flag raising, lining up, lunch distribution, etc.) had archetypal heroes, rebellious and sunburnt, who laughed their heads off and were on the verge of becoming young adolescents