Day 58/59: Baths in Budapest and Back to Blogging

I can't believe it's been over a month since I last wrote here. So much has happened, and so for the last few weeks, I've been telling myself to write things down again, post pictures, etc. But. Alas. What got in the way? I'm not really sure. Of course, once classes started, math has kept me pretty busy, and when I'm not doing math, I'm usually hanging out with friends or cooking or sleeping or grocery shopping, but still: I'm not sure this justifies my spontaneous month-long hiatus. Anyway. Onwards.

Yesterday, some friends and I paid a visit to the Szechenyi baths, which are located a mere few blocks away from my apartment. I wasn't really sure how it was going to work out, and I didn't want to risk getting my wallet stolen or anything, so I brought a bag full of coins that I had accumulated over the last few weeks. My friends joked about how they would hate me for paying entirely in coins, and I think they had a point: I was about to pay the equivalent of $10-15 in quarters. We entered the huge, extravagant, yellow-painted building and I let my friends pay before me so I could count out how much I had to pay beforehand. I stood there in line, clutching my ziploc bag of what must have been 2 pounds of coins, waiting. And then it was my turn. I approached the cashier timidly, and poured out 1950 forints in front of her in an assortment of 200-forint, 100-forint, and 50-forint coins, and to my surprise, she looked absolutely relieved. She let out this huge sigh and thanked me profusely in Hungarian. I paid for my ticket, and then she saw my bag of coins. Her eyes became wide with excitement and she gestured for me to give her the bag. I handed it over and she dumped it all out and started counting. A few minutes later, she had happily refilled her cash register with 7,000 forints of coins, courtesy of me, and I was happily touting a ziploc bag full of bills. Lovely.

Outside the Szechenyi Baths

As a ticket to get in, we each got a watch-like thing to wear around our wrists. It's made of this cheap, bright blue plastic and looks like a fake wristwatch you'd buy at a toy store. But it's so much more. To get in, you scan your watch into this machine, and then you walk through the little spinny thing much like the spinny things at metro stations. Here's a picture:

And then once you've scanned your bracelet, you're in: all of the mineral baths, hot tubs, swimming pools, saunas, massage parlours are right there in front of you. But first: locker rooms.

In the States, most of the people who pay visits to public swimming pools are either under the age of 17 or they're modestly dressed, women in full-piece swimsuits, men in swim trunks. But Europe is another story. Example: men in their 50s who are wider around than I am tall and have more hair on their body than I have on my head, proudly flaunt their skin in tiny Speedos. They like to take a scrubber thing into the sauna with them, prop up a leg, and exfoliate their calves, undoubtably sending millions of dead skin cells and loose hairs into the hot and stuffy air. I stood outside the sauna, but even though I observed this from a distance, I was still completely disgusted by this activity. But I seemed to be the only one who minded. People would go in and out, chat casually with people scraping their hairy legs, sit on the wooden benches and lean back on spread-out arms, openly displaying their bikini-clad bodies. And in contrast, I was standing outside, trying to shrink back into the wall, self-consciously holding my towel around my waist, which was already covered by my one-piece bathing suit.

Overall, it was quite a pleasant experience. The mineral baths felt absolutely wonderful, but it was 55 degrees outside, so getting out of the water was not terribly fun. And in general, I was pretty disgusted by how dirty all the water must be, with so much people traffic, but in the complement of those times, I enjoyed the fancy things like the whirlpools that had jets of water coming out from the walls, pushing you counterclockwise around the tub. I'm not sure I will be going back, but it was definitely something worth doing. If you're not too picky about cleanliness, then a trip to the Szechenyi baths is an absolute must.

I didn't take any pictures inside, but here's one from
this site here.

After a couple hours, we headed to the grocery store to buy food for dinner. Then we headed back to our apartment and spent the next couple of hours cooking. Our meal? Baked turkey, tomato soup, stir-fried zucchini, and rice. Oh, and dessert, too! My roommate's an excellent chef, and she whipped up a delicious vanilla custard pie.

Dinner...

... and dessert! :)

Well, it's nearing my bedtime, so that's all for now, but I will upload more pictures and stuff soon! I should probably write something about some of my September adventures, which include a trip to Sarajevo, lots of cooking and baking (think super-healthy things like quinoa and yogurt and muesli and less-healthy-but-super-delicious things like baklava, biscotti, brownies, and cinnamon buns), a walking trip around Budapest, a fantastic concert at the Béla Bártok National Concert Hall, Der Rosenkavalier at the opera house, etc. Bye for now, and hopefully it won't be a month and a half before I next write.