During the meeting we will discuss case studies on restoration of the ecological quality of surface waters (lakes or rivers).
Questions to be addressed during the workshop are:
- do we understand why some attempts were succesful, and why others were not?
- what can we learn from studies that were done thus far?
- on what timescale effects can be expected?
- etc.

During the meeting we will visit the area of the Kis-Balaton wetland on the Zala River on the morning of 8 May. This has been reconstructed for eutrophication management of Lake Balaton. Now it belongs to the Balaton Highlands Nature Protection Park. It is beautiful with very diverse birds. See also the website; unfortunately, the text is available only in Hungarian but there are some videos to look at when selecting “MOZI”. For this, it is advised to use Microsoft Internet Explorer, since Mozilla Firefox does not show videos.
For more information about the wetland you could read e.g.
Tatrai, I., K. Matyas, J. Korponai, G. Paulovits, and P. Pomogyi. 2000. The role of the Kis-Balaton Water Protection System in the control of water quality of Lake Balaton. Ecol. Eng. 16:73-78.

The local organizer of the workshop is Vera Istvánovics (email). Please contact her if you want to attend the meeting.
Please indicate if you want to give an oral presentation or if you want to present a poster.
Short (half page) abstracts are requested before 15 March.
Co-organizers are: Petri Ekholm, Penny Johnes, Ken Irvine, Thomas Hein, Jean-Marcel Dorioz and Wim Chardon.

The workshop will take place on 6, 7 and 8 May 2009 at the West Transdanubian Water Authority, located at Csik Ferenc sétáry, which is right on the South West shore of Lake Balaton in Hungary.
On the Google Map below you can see the location of Keszthely, and on a larger scale by pressing the "-" button or click "View Larger Map" just below the map.
There is also a more detailed map available with the meeting place and hotels, see below.

View Larger Map

There are two nice hotels, both are about 1 km from the Kis-Balaton Laboratory of the West Transdanubian Water Authority (signed by “B” on the map below) where the meeting will take place.

. . . . . A - Hotel Bacchus C - Hotel Kristaly B - Meeting place

The two hotels are :
* Hotel Bacchus .(email; and website; signed by “A” on the map); single room 42 €/night; double room 56 €/night.
* Hotel Kristaly ..(email; and website; signed by “C” on the map); single room 44 €/night; double room 56 €/night
The prices include breakfast. In addition, a “resort tax” of 1.5 €/person is to be paid upon arrival at the hotel.
Since Lake Balaton is a very popular resort area, please, book your hotel as soon as possible. When booking, please indicate that you visit the workshop of Cost Action 869.

There is a limited number of flights to the FlyBalaton airport in Sármellék, near Keszthely (South West, see map above). Ryanair operates flights from London and Frankfurt 3 times a week: Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. In addition, they have flights from Düsseldorf on Wednesday and Sunday. Lufthansa has flights from Hamburg, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf on Saturday.

The Ferihegy airport in Budapest can be reached any time from any European city. There are several buses and trains to Keszthely. The travel time is between 3 to 4 hours and the cost is 20 to 30 euros.

Keszthely is about the same distance from both Budapest and Vienna so that it is also possible to take a flight to Vienna. There is a Hungarian company that offers airport transfer to Keszthely from both Vienna and Budapest. According to their homepage, the price of a normal taxi (4 persons) is about 200 euros and a minibus taxi (8 persons) is 144 euros. The schedule of the Hungarian Railways can be found at http://elvira.mav-start.hu/

The website of the Volán bus company is available only in Hungarian: http://www.menetrendek.hu/cgi-bin/menetrend/html.cgi Nevertheless, it is not difficult to use this knowing that honnan means "from where", and hova means "to where" and one should adjust the date.

A collection was made of trains and buses that reach Keszthely in reasonable time (see attached file. The selection is limited to the afternoon of 5 May and the whole day on 8 May. Other trains and buses can be found at the above websites.

The bus will not cost more than EUR 15. Trains have somewhat variable price as can be seen at the website, but a 2nd class ticket is cheaper than bus while a first class ticket is roughly equivalent to the bus. Next week Vera will make maps and instructions how to go from the airport to the stations.

With some efforts, Vera thinks she can properly organize an appropriate taxi transfer for most participants. There will certainly be a few "problematic" cases that will be treated individually.