Knee-deep in a natural and national institution

Some sort of osmosis drags all Hungarians to Balaton sooner or later, writes Bridget Hourican

It is impossible to spend a summer in Budapest without visiting Lake Balaton. You begin with stern resolutions not to go - in May. This seems a breeze, but already by June, resolutions, like plants, are withering. By August, you resemble a camel in search of an oasis: no thought in your head but reaching water. The nearest sea is a plane journey away in Croatia, so you get in your car, or hop on the train, and head with the multitude for the largest lake in Europe, which Hungarians, with no trace of irony, call their sea.

The first glimpse of the Balaton from road or rail, is extraordinary: among pale green rushes, it sparkles - a light shimmering aquamarine. The thing to do at this moment is look your fill, then turn the car 180 degrees, or alight and catch the next train back to Budapest. But only those with military or yogic training have the requisite willpower. The rest of us rush headlong towards a mirage: the aquamarine shifts imperceptibly and in front of you is a large grey pond.

Swimming in the Balaton when you're used to the sea is like going back to kissing when more adventurous embraces have been attained. Except in a few places, the water does not rise above the waist. You wade for what seems like hours and then realise that this is as deep as it gets. The water temperature is palely tepid. Underfoot the ground is squelchy and suggestive of mites, midges, mosquitoes and other things that lay eggs in your toenails. Rearing up from the reeds in sudden, slimy flashes are water snakes - non- venomous and exotic, they provide the only excitement.

But it's when you're done swimming - when you have met, if unsatisfactorily, your deep need for water, that things get really bad. Probably you're here for the weekend but even if only on a day trip, you still have to draw breath and eat.

Perhaps a hundred years ago when the lakeshore was home to an artist's colony, this was a calm, peaceful retreat, but generations of cheap tourism have trashed it.

The promenades of deck chairs, beach balls, postcard stands, ghetto-blasters and candy floss go on mile after mile. At night the worst music you have ever heard blasts from the discos. Turn on the telly in your hotel room and porn pops up. "Zimmer Frei!" proclaim the signs on every house, reminding you, if you hadn't noticed, that Austrians, Germans and Dutch are the backbone of tourism here.

Even from the safety of an Irish newspaper, I feel guilty about mocking the Balaton: Hungarians, all Hungarians, love their lake. It is for them the innocence of childhood. They have only to slip into it for all their troubles to wash away in the grey snaky waters.

It is true that the Balaton's safe, tepid, environs make it a kind of kiddie paradise. If you have children and bring them often enough, they too will grow up with an ineradicable affection for this place. Hungarians also claim that only part of the lake is tourist hell and direct you to Tihany as "the pearl of the Balaton" - a green historic paradise of Benedictine abbeys, away from the disco rough and fumble.

Tihany might be better preserved than the rest, but it's about as hidden and unexplored as Dingle. There is nowhere along this lakeshore that hasn't been thoroughly upended. The problem though isn't just tourism. It goes deeper.

Spend a few hours here and depression swamps me. Spend the night and I want to take to my bed like a Victorian neurotic. I think it's to do with the great expanse of water without tides, waves or depths, without rocks, salt or currents. If you were brought up near the sea, you need that tidal ebb and flow to feel renewed. An enclosed lake, unfiltered by rivers, engenders panic. The Balaton has some message of serenity, but it is hidden from the seafarer.