One Last Soproni and I'll Quit Writing
March 30, 2014
Budapest, Hungary
Today is my last day in Budapest. I want to make the most of it, but I find writing is, well, making the most of it.
It’s nearly impossible to keep up the pace I have been at for another day. My reflection is haggard and I yawn often. It’s time to simply enjoy life with out the fear I will miss something.
I will miss something. Lots of things really. The good news is, I won’t know what I miss by virtue of missing it. That’s great, actually. So, I give myself to write until noon, with repeated interruptions from the maid looking to finish off her floor. I suppose I should hang a sign on the doorknob, but I am busy writing. I enjoy getting lost in my head.
Finally I finish for the day. I have a ticket for an open top bus tour that I plan to use for my afternoon that leaves right from my hotel square. It’s a minute's walk to the bus stop. I redeem my ticket and take a seat.
While I tour the city, the guide’s advice plays in my head. She has recommended I go the the baths that are included with my ticket. I have reviewed the places online, thermal spas where people swim and get treatments and I am pretty certain I can pass this one up.
Well, I was. Now I am thinking I may never get here again and I have missed out on one of the main attractions.
Dang, I’m going to have to do it.
I enjoy the rest of the tour, never hopping on or off. In the middle of the Danube as I was admiring the view, a wasp flew down my shirt and stung me. I’m not allergic but a I am prone to an active imagination. I miss the information on at least one stop as I review my options for medical evacuation. From a bee sting.
I decide to calm down over a late lunch in a cafe at the hotel. Sipping my beer, I decide to try the baths. I can always leave if I don’t like it, I decide. It should be a very relaxing end to a hectic week on the go.
Unwilling to risk the welfare of my lone pair of flip flops, I borrow ultra white spa slippers from my room to pack into a plastic shopping bag with my suit and towel. Open minded as I may be, there isn’t a chance I am EVER going to rent a “bathing costume”, like the bath website offers.
A short taxi ride takes me to the rear of Heroes Square, past a circus and petting zoo, to the Szechenyi Bath complex. It’s a huge yellow group of buildings accented with white painted ribbons draped over pillars. Inside, two ticket sellers take cash only from the bathers for entry. Straight ahead- bathing costume rental. The suits are just as cute as any board shop, which I find surprising. I figured they would be dowdy one pieces in black, grey or blue. Either, way, I am glad I brought my own.
The attendant tells me a kabin is included, which is a form of changing room the reviews say. I nod as I take the plastic adjustable band he gives me to wander around for an entrance. The only signs in English are the ones about not losing stuff they rent you or losing your hefty deposit. I finally watch some groups enter a hallway and not return so I head that direction. I find a man with a turnstile that flashes green for entry when I press my watchband up against it. I’m in.
Ahead of me is a long corridor filled with dripping people squeaking along in rubber shoes of all kinds. A woman in all white scans people’s bands against a machine on the wall that flashes a number. I hold my hand up and see 404 illuminated.
The kabins are small wooden changing rooms, ten to an alcove, locked by the watchbands. My opens only for me and me alone. I change inside the tiny wooden room and slip only my conspicuous footwear. Out in public I go with my towel wrapped firmly around me.
I am pleasantly surprised to see it seems just like a resort pool. People drink beer along the edges, children in swimming caps (required in the lap pool) horseplay and couple nestle in corners. It’s pretty comfortable.
Both ends of the courtyard have large communal pools filled with people. The lap pool is in the center. I enter, the sign promising and delivering a pleasant 30 degrees. Ringing the edge, though, is the typical cool off alternative of a freezing stream.
The current in the pool, a 1.05 m depth, is enough to knock me off my feet in some parts. There is much merrymaking around a central seated section with an outer current spinning people in circles like a moat as the inner denizens rest against jets. Huge bubble erupt from the blue tiled floor in sections where one can stand, kneel or lay over the stream of water.
I would really like to ask someone if there is something hotter. I am beginning to freeze as the sun is dropping low in the sky. I move towards one group of Canadians, only to hear him refer to some native women as squaws. I give him a look of disdain, but he’s clueless. I move then towards a group of the athletes (runners, it turns out) who are celebrating the end of their games. One man in his late fifties is telling a slightly younger Italian woman with mischievous eyes about how he broke his own record this weekend. I hate to break up what might be first date.
I get really hopeful when an American girl yells to her buddies about her towel across the pool. They too, move away before I can swim against the current. Cold enough to quit, I grab my towel and slippers and head inside to find a map or human.
Directly across the courtyard are the thermal baths, what I have been looking for all along. I slosh in my wet terry slippers across the soaked courtyard, careful to not slip on the marble stairs. The doors open into a sauna where semi naked European are piled six benches high across a fifty foot wall. I’m not ready for that.
Luckily, to my right is a series of white tiled pools in ascending degrees marked by signs on the wall. I toss my towel on the radiators like everyone else and slip into the heat next to a pair of chatty athletes of unknown origin. I enjoy checking out the varied suits on bodies of every color, size, height, ethnicity and body composition. Although uncomfortable around the average pool crowd, I I can relax a little here because there are no supermodels. Just regular folk with beer bellies, stretched out boobs, too much fat, too little fat, lots of hair, no hair. Many of these people are just wearing themselves the way they were made, counting on their personalities for appeal. Everyone is pretty much wearing a smile, though.
After ten minutes or so, another woman in white tells us to leave. No one else does, so I stay as well. I want to savor every last moment before my departure. Eventually, she doesn’t take no for an answer and we all leave the pool. On my way out, I help the American girls get a great shot of them on a balustrade overlooking the pools.
It’s a short but somehow twice as expensive taxi ride to the Sofitel to a dinner of room service chicken paprikas and Soproni beer after packing. I am on a self imposed lockdown because I really fear I will be up until my alarm rings at 3 a.m. Then it’s 5 flights home to Indio after a lunch stop in Seattle with a friend.
As I type this, I sit at my desk overlooking the Chain Bridge with my with window cracked. There’s something about this city that slowly wins you over. Maybe it’s the food, the people of just the way the light does something magnificent when you have written off the skyline for the smog.
Either way, I am going to end up missing Budpest.
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http://www.szechenyibath.com/
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