Baths in Budapest: Exploring Budapest's Thermal Baths.pdf

8/11/2019 Baths in Budapest: Exploring Budapest's Thermal Baths.pdf

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The Water of Winter: Baths in Budapest

The steam rising out of the drain cover caught my attention first. It was a cold, vengefully cold mid-

winter morning in Hungary as I paced along the tarmac, limbs mechanical yet numb, face frozen, eyesrimmed with weather-induced tears.

Everyone was cold. I saw it in the hunched shoulders and stooped spines of the commuters who

huddled past, bundled beneath thick duffel coats, pressed scarves and peaked hats.

Which was why the drain surprised me.

Whimsical fingers of mist curled through the gaps, growing thinner as they spiralled up towards the

sky, the sky which experience told me still loomed overhead but which I avoided looking at in case I

inadvertently exposed another sliver of my neck to Budapests biting air.

No, these wisps of steam alone could tell me that I was on the right track, that my heavy, hurried feet

were carrying me towards the Szechenyi Baths.


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Baths in Budapest

Thermal baths are to Budapest what baguettes and boulangeries are to Paris or yellow taxis are to New

York. From the Szechenyi, to the Gellert, to the Lukacs, a range of extravagant, resplendent buildings

reside on both the Buda and Pest sides of the city, plunging beneath the earth to draw up thermal

waters for the benefit of cleansing and healing its citizens, not to mention providing the necessary

environment for a game of chess.

Thats right, chess. Id seen the iconic pictures, now I longed to see the real thing.

Thanks to the lovely people at the Budapest Tourist Office, Id been granted the right to take photos

within the Szechenyi Baths. No thanks to the hideous behaviour of one woman at the admission gate,

most of that time was lost. A story for perhaps another day, despite its insight into life before and after

the fall of the iron curtain and the interesting debate about clothing, steam and near freezing

temperatures.

Eventually, I was in and the clock was ticking.


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Changing Rooms: Cropped to Protect Those Within

I raced through the subterranean changing rooms with their peeling paint and faint sense of

psychiatric prisons from films of the 1950s. I strode through the exercise rooms with skull-capped

water aerobics classes that reinforced that impression. I threw those ubiquitous swimming hats forshoes across my feet and burst into the fresh air of the central area of the Szechenyi Baths

That reedy steam Id seen clawing through the drainpipe outside now billowed and bellowed across the

outdoor pools, cloaking and claiming swimmers who soaked in its scorching path, not to mention the

stony Venus who twisted her spine around to watch.

Here in the heart of Hungary, I watched thermal water turn to vapour in the home of Budapests oldest

thermal bath (on the Pest side of the city at least.)

And while cold air turned my rapid breath into clouds, I found a place for playing chess.


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It also forms part of the #IronRoute project - a journey from Istanbul to Berlin that criss-crosses back

and forth across the former Iron Curtain.Read all about it here.
http://www.insidethetravellab.com/the-iron-route-from-istanbul-to-berlin/http://www.insidethetravellab.com/the-iron-route-from-istanbul-to-berlin/

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Baths in Budapest: Exploring Budapest's Thermal Baths.pdf