About this journey

Budapest Déli station sits at the heart of the Buda side of the capital, a terminus whose modern façade — unique among Budapest's major rail terminals — was completed in 1975 after wartime damage to the earlier structure. Five island platforms and two side platforms serve twelve tracks, all of which dead-end here, making every southbound departure a reversal of the city before open country begins. The station first opened in 1861 on the line towards Rijeka, then Fiume, on the Adriatic coast of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and it was that same year the railway between Buda and Nagykanizsa was officially opened, bringing the Lake Balaton shore within reach of the capital.

Line 30, the Budapest–Murakeresztúr route, carries the journey south through Transdanubia toward the lake. Siófok, where the Sió Channel flows out of Lake Balaton, lies along this corridor; its station building was completed in 1863, though trains had been stopping there since 1861. Beyond Siófok the southern shore continues to Balatonszemes, a lakeside town with its own place in history: during the 1848 revolution, Croatian Ban Jelačić named the port of Balatonszemes as the meeting point for talks with Archduke Stephen. The journey moves from a busy urban terminus, through a shore shaped by empire-era engineering, to a quieter stretch of the Balaton coast.