Funside Balaton international summer camp

Mornings belong to classes. Every camper picks two classes for each weekly session, and the choice is wide: English and Native English with an intensive option, English Drama, Podcast in English and Hungarian as a foreign language; sports from American football and baseball to tennis and racketlon, archery, outdoor cross training and yoga; water sports including sailing, windsurfing, paddleboarding and waterpolo; golf and horseback riding at partner venues nearby; art, dance, DJ, fashion upcycling and amigurumi crochet; cooking and sweet baking; 3D printing, podcast creation and zoo studies. Language classes are grouped by level, from beginner to advanced, and the groups are bilingual wherever local and international campers learn side by side: the teacher gives instructions in both English and Hungarian, so one of the two languages is enough to follow the class.

The camp fee covers two standard classes per weekly session, accommodation, four meals a day, all afternoon and evening activities including entry tickets and travel to the programmes held outside the camp, medical supervision on site, a camp T-shirt and the camp photo set, which is assembled at the end of each week and handed over as a free digital download. Premium classes — sailing, golf, horseback riding, windsurfing, paddleboarding, zoo studies, DJ, cooking, sweet baking, 3D printing and the native English intensive — carry a weekly supplement, and a camper may take up to two of them in place of standard classes. Travel to and from the camp, travel and accident insurance and pocket money are not part of the fee. A supervised group bus from Budapest, an extra day with full board and a cancellation guarantee can be added to the booking.

Campers sleep in buildings, not tents, in simple and comfortable rooms of three to six beds. Most stay in the two-storey main building, where every four, five and six-bed room has its own bathroom. The Sunshine Hostel, laid out as apartments with separate girls' and boys' wings, holds twelve rooms of three to five beds with bathrooms shared inside each wing; these rooms go to the oldest campers, aged sixteen and seventeen. Beds and nightstands in the main building are being replaced in stages, air conditioning has been added to the shared spaces and the mosquito nets renewed.

Four meals a day. Breakfast, a warm two-course lunch and a warm dinner are cooked in the camp's own kitchen in the simple, child-friendly style of a classic Hungarian camp kitchen, with dishes from international cuisines added through the season; cereal is available at breakfast as an alternative. A snack point opens during the mid-morning break between classes with porridge, instant soup or granola bars, and a fruit point offers seasonal fruit — apples, pears, bananas, peaches or nectarines — both free of charge. Drinking water is available without limit from dispensers around the camp. Regular, vegetarian and pork-free menus are prepared on site; lactose-free, milk-protein-free and gluten-free menus arrive daily from specialist external kitchens at no extra cost, with a medical certificate. Vegan meals, and fully separated meals for severe nut allergies, are not available at this venue.

Afternoons and evenings are shared by the whole camp and change from week to week: beach games, a beach party and water team games on Lake Balaton, a colour run, a night adventure in teams, music night, party games and a neon night, an open-air teen disco, a lantern festival on the shore, a talent show the campers organise themselves, and themed days built around a country and its culture. Excursions go to a nearby fun park with trampolines, climbing walls and a boulder room, to an aqua park and to a water obstacle course on the lake. Screenings are held in the camp's own open-air theatre.

The camp stands directly next to the lakeshore, with the nearest beach a hundred metres away. On site there are grass, sand and all-weather sports fields, an artificial turf tennis court, community rooms and classrooms, a large theatre hall used for the dance classes, an open-air theatre, the camp kitchen and dining room, and a buffet selling snacks, soft drinks and ice cream. Windsurfing, paddleboarding and sailing classes take place on the beach immediately next to the camp; golf is held at a resort course and horseback riding at a riding school in the area, with transport provided. Wireless internet is available to campers free of charge during set periods. Camp doctors — medical students, doctors or paramedics — are on duty throughout.

A bilingual camp with a strongly international intake: around a thousand campers from nearly thirty countries come each summer, and many return year after year with their friends and siblings. The team of fifty to sixty teachers and instructors is assembled through a long recruitment process that includes background checks, the camp keeps a five-to-one child-to-adult ratio, and medical staff are on duty around the clock. Classes are small — the DJ group, for instance, takes no more than five campers — and the afternoon programme keeps international and local children together, which is where the language practice actually happens.