Swimming in a pool of all clear

After about 5 weeks of travelling, yesterday I had one of my most bizarre experiences yet. I took a bus down to the Gellert Baths on the Buda side of Budapest and bathed in a thermal pool along with countless other naked old Hungarian men.

Oh vacation! Such a sweet life to lead!

When travelling, it is easy to fall into a tourist routine, waiting in line in musuems, walking in and out of churches, treading down the "main drags" of unfamiliar cities, checking internet, eating in touristy restaurants and trying to fall asleep on trains. While these experiences are all fine and good, they tend to blend in with each other, especially after a month of them. The tricky part in travelling is to find those experiences which are sufficiently distinct so that upon remembering one cannot help but shake one's head and mutter "I cannot believe I did that."

I've had only a few on this trip so far. Drinking Brennivin shots in the apartment of some strangers in Iceland, singing along to Queen was one. Swimming in the harbor at night in Riomaggiore was another. The live opera peformance I stumbled upon in Naples was one as well.

I think yesterday's Turkish baths definitely qualify as they were both extremely weird and...actually...quite comfortable. Nobody spoke almost any English, so the instructions regarding where I was supposed to take my clothes off, where I was supposed to put them, and how I was supposed to get them back were unclear. Also the instructions about showering, feet sanitizing and waiting in line for massage, quite unclear.

But I figured it all out. I bathed in a heated bath, built in the 16th century {old style architecture and everything!} Actually a beautiful building, high vaulted ceilings, ornate wall decorations. And fantastic prices. 28 bucks for the use of the pool and a half hour massage, which was my first in a very, very long time. Despite the fact that there was no privacy {3 fat naked old Hungarian guys in the same room}, and during I felt that I kept overhearing the word "Amerikai" with a negative tone, I felt relaxed and refreshed when it was all over. Keep in mind how much walking I have been doing, and how much has involved a heavy, heavy pack and you'll appreciate how good it felt to have everything put back in place.

And what ELSE have I done in Hungary???????

WELL....My first night here {two nights ago}

1. Dinner at a place called Cyrano. I walked up and down the touristy boulevard until I found something that looked good enough, accepted credit card, had traditional Hungarian food, and was in my price range. I was very pleased with my choice. I ordered some sort of veal {breaking my only food prohibition} with egg dumplings and a fantastic cabbage salad. And probably the best bottle of wine I have had on this trip. I chatted with the Canadian couple next to me. The wife was not a big fan of Dubrovnik! No fair! They, as all the couples I end up chatting with at dinner were very nice, but also, in a much different age and price range than I. So we said goodbye after dinner.

2. A stop in a supermarket to buy some fried fish, and some sausage. Yum. But Hungarian supermarkets? Tend to be very small, with mirrors everywhere to make them seem bigger. That had a Cold War, starving eastern Europeans feel to it which I did not like. The food selection was also not huge, but the price was right and they took credit cards. Bang, bang!

3. Ferencz Liszt ter {the "happening" street in town} in search of nightlife. I didn't find it. I wasn't really happy with any of the bars or cafes I saw. All just looked a LITTLE too empty for my taste. If the street had half as many bars, with twice as many people in each, it would have been great.

4. Getting lost on the buses, ending up on the wrong side of the beautiful blue danube {actually, it is green and kind of dirty} but finding my way back. I complained recently about the buses in Budapest. But I have to take that back. The buses here are actually much, much easier to navigate than buses anywhere else. Instead of potentially stopping in a million places, and putting the onus on the bus riders to ring the bell when they want to stop, the budapest buses have fewer stops, but ALWAYS stop there. And they have displays announcing what stop is coming up as well as all available connections. Awesome! And they don't seem to check for bus tickets!

5. Getting back to the hostel, very, very tired, but chatting with Henry and Steve from Portsmouth, England and stealing a little bit of their pizza.

And yesterday?

1. The Great Synagogue! The largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world! It's huge but...still smaller than a lot of the churches I've seen. By far the most architecturally attractive synagogue I have seen {with the exception, Ben, if you are reading this, as I doubt, of the one your dad made in Irvine...}. Still, I felt sad to be there. I don't know so much about the details of how the Holocaust went down in Hungary, but I know it wasn't good. As I walked past the English tours that I declined to pay for, I could hear each of the tour guides making apologetic statements about Hungary's treatment of the Jews, about how historically "tolerant" Hungary was, about Hungarians who tried to save Jews, etc. And that's fine and good. But either way, in both Dubrovnik and Budapest I can sense that the Jews have always been an unwelcome presence. But the synagogue was nice. I'm glad I went.

2. Breakfast of veal sausage {yep, broke the rule again}, and espresso. Hungarian woman sitting next me started chatting. Told me how much she hates living here and that she wishes she could move to America. And that she works three jobs. But showed me pictures of her son and daughter. Who both looked good.

3. The Baths. I already talked about that.

4. Streetcar {I am getting SO good at public transport!} to Mammut Plaza for some gyros for lunch. I have been craving gyros lately. And REALLY craving spicy. This was slightly spicy. Much better than nothing.

5. The Buda Castle. Nice view of the city. But it's been destroyed and rebuilt so many times it didn't have the old feeling that castles are supposed to have. But inside it I went to the...

6. Hungarian National Gallery. Which was actually great. Almost all the art was by painters I had never encountered in museums before, but which was exceptional. There was some dreamy stuff from the turn of the century, unlike the impressionism and post-impressionism I am used to.

7. Funicula down the mountain!

8. So so dinner of spicy meat sandwich with some okay wine.

9. Back to Ferencz Liszt ter, which was looking much better last night. Lot more people, looked exciting and happening. Had a GREAT bottle of wine {I am loving the Hungarian wine, by the way, better than anywhere I've been so far} and some oxtail soup. And a bit of Jane Eyre of course. And boy does that plot twist. Unfortunately everybody there was Hungarian, so I didn't get to talk to anybody. Hungarian is a particularly tricky language. No cognates with English {or any Indo-European language} except for a few borrowed words, so I am always completely at the mercy of the English language skills of the person I am talking to. Unlike French or Italian where I can figure out some words, with Hungarian I have nothing. Very socially isolating.

10. Back to the hostel for chatting with three English guys and a Scottish guy. I fell asleep on the couch in the lobby of the hostel.