Szechenyi Baths

My plan for today was this: RELAX. I vowed to get a solid 8 hours of sleep, wake up, and go to the Turkish baths. I was excited about this for many reasons. First of all, Budapest is...guess what...famous for baths! (That use the thermal water that created all the caves). Second of all, at the baths, you can get massages! After all my walking and carrying my pack (well, not like I have to ever carry it far or for long) I thought I deserved a massage right around the halfway point of our trip. Third of all, in the last 5 and a half weeks, Laura and I have been together pretty much 24/7 except for showering...we do that separately. So both of us were looking forward to having some alone time. It is really nice to travel with somebody with such a similar style to myself, because we both appreciate having space and aren't offended if somebody wants to be alone for a little while. The baths weren't worth a paid visit to Laura hence the convenient space for alone time.

I made it to the baths by around 1130 ish and stayed until about 4. The architecture of the baths is beautiful!! The building are yellow and white, with lots of gorgeous designs and sculptures. I struggled a bit getting oriented because although it is one of Budapest's top tourist attractions, hardly anybody at the bath really speaks English. It was very difficult to get questions answered or to understand fully what I was buying or how the baths worked in general. So I did a lot of learning by watching. That tends to be a rather slow, awkward, and tedious process but it did the trick.

When we stopped by the Szechenyi baths a few days ago to ask questions, they said they had lots of space for massages but it was recommended that you reserve ahead. But I didn't know exactly which day I was going to go since baths are a recommended activity when it's rainy out. Saturday ended up being sunny and gorgeous, hence coming today, on Sunday. But when I got to the counter, the lady said that there were no more massages today, by which I think she meant the cheaper massages were sold out. There is a Thai company inside the baths that sell more expensive massages but I didn't want to pay for that. They also have 'packages' at the baths which I understood from my prior visit to mean that you could pay for an entrance ticket and a massage for less than the price of those two things individually. However, nobody at the counters seemed to understand the English names of any of the packages much less what they included. It was weird. So, a little bummed that there would be no massage, I bought my entrance ticket (it's about an hour away from Bernhard's, so I didn't want to try and reserve a massage for Monday and come back tomorrow) and went in.

They give you a 'proxy watch' which is how you enter and exit the baths as well as open and close your locker. Of course there are no instructions in English regarding how to open and close your locker with the watch. When I watched people and tried to imitate them, my locker wouldn't lock. I had no clue if I was doing it wrong or if the locker was broken. Finally I moved to another locker which I did figure out how to open/close. Great! When you leave the lockers and walk outside, there are three large pools. One is being renovated, the middle pool looks like a swimming pool, and the third pool was filled with people sitting in its luke warm water.

Walking all the way through that courtyard, you arrive at the actual baths, which are all indoors. There might have been some out of doors, but the venue was HUGE and guess what? Of course there were basically no maps anywhere to tell you where the heck you were. Which was quite confusing because there were a surprisingly large amount of activities you could do at the bath, if you could ever freaking find them! So I just wandered and hoped I was getting my money's worth.

The actual baths were very, very nice. There is only one or two baths per room, but all the rooms are connected in a long horizontal hallway. There are saunas interspersed and the walls are basically lined with showers to use in between baths and before and after sauna-ing. The coldest baths were 20 degrees Celsius and the hottest were 40 degrees Celsius. There might have been colder or hotter baths but I definitely couldn't find them. The baths then came in almost every degree possible between 20 and 40; there were baths exactly set to 26, 28, 35, 38 degrees etc. I think different baths are supposed to have different specific healing properties but good luck to me trying to figure any of that out. Huge language barrier. The saunas also were in different heat ranges. Some were 50-60 degrees, others 60-80 degrees.

My general routine, after lots of aimless wandering between the different rooms of baths in all shapes, sizes, and heat levels, was to sauna in the hottest sauna - which I literally could not handle for more than 5 minutes before I felt like my whole body was on fire - go into the cold pool (20 degrees = FREEZING!), then go to the super hot pool (40 degrees). Then when that got too hot I would go down to the cold pool again or to a 35 or 38 degree pool, whatever I felt like. My favorite part was sitting in the 40 degree pool across from the 20 degree pool and watching other people get in. You get used to the water, so sometimes there will be groups of people sitting in there like it's a normal warm pool. Then somebody else will walk in and be very surprised about how cold it is! Even if you read the 20 degrees sign it is still quite chilly which generated lots of fantastic reactions!

Also in my wandering, I happened to find a place with many different wooden stalls. I asked around, and got shuffled from person to person until finally somebody told me that this was a massage area. A massage area? The massage area? Are there more than one? So confused, all the time. I asked if there were any massage spaces left today since at the front desk they told me they were closed. They said yes. Their signs advertising types and prices were the exact same as the signs by the front desk. Then I asked if I could sign up for one, and they said yes. Sweet! So I asked what times were available, since I was planning on being at the baths for a while and would definitely plan my time around getting a massage. They couldn't understand that question though, so finally I just said "1" and they said "OK come back then". So I came back at 12:55 and nobody from 45 minutes ago was there that I recognized, especially not the one person who could speak a little English to me. So I tried to explain to them that they had told me to come back at 1 for a massage. They told me to wait 'here' for 10 minutes. I asked, "where, just here in the lobby? How do I know when it's my turn? Will somebody come get me?" Just thinking - how does this place work!? Then, instead of making me wait 10 minutes, they just said, "ok, come on, we take you now." What? Ok. So some plump Hungarian woman took me to one of the little stalls and I finally got my silly massage.

I have no idea how good of a massage it was because I've had so few in my life. But it definitely was relaxing. I only got the cheapest, 20 minute massage so it felt extremely rushed and not very detail oriented to any particular knots. And I always have knots. But...I got my massage.

Walking back through all the mazes of rooms to my locker to put my change and camera away, I saw the door that I went through to my very first bath of the day. Earlier in the day, there were very few people there and things like water weights lining the edges of the bath. It looked a bit like a swimming pool and wasn't that warm. I watched people but couldn't really figure out what I was supposed to do there, so I left. But for some reason, maybe because it was later in the day, I tried the door again. This time there was a lady, who miraculously spoke English, who said, "No bath - fitness class only!" And I said, "Fitness class...is it free?" and she said, "yes, they start every half an hour." Sweet! I was going to be late to this class so I put my stuff away and did my sauna, cold, hot pool routine some more.

Half an hour later, I went back and the lady said, "oh, you're back." Of course I was back! Free! Fitness class! For whatever reason (it was Hungary's Mother's Day), nobody else really showed up, so I basically got a private aqua-aerobics-fitness class!! One other lady joined us part way through. The fitness instructor was very patient with me since it was my first time doing a class like that and it's actually quite difficult. I also have bad rhythm and poor coordination so it was an interesting 20 minutes. Really excited that worked out though!

Then I spent some more time in the baths, heard next to no English, and spent the day by myself just quietly pondering life and stuff. It was extremely pleasant; I definitely accomplished my goal of relaxing. I took a shower at the baths and then began the trek back to Bernhard's place, where I hoped Laura wasn't bored or waiting on me (she told me to stay as long as I liked).

On the way back, I somehow accidentally took the right metro but in the wrong direction. I was only one stop away from the last stop, so when we stopped and everybody got off I was quite confused, since my destination was a good 8 or 9 stops away. I'd actually validated one of the tickets Bernhard gave us too because they actually check metro passengers. But the machine said the ticket was valid for half an hour, so I figured I'd be fine. I crossed to the other side of the platform as I heard another metro coming (going in the right direction this time). However, I got stopped at the bottom of the stairs and the ticket checkers told me my ticket was invalid. They spoke pretty much no English and I got very frustrated, upset, and embarrassed about the situation. I tried so hard explaining, still with soaking wet hair, that I had obviously just come from the baths, I had JUST validated my tickets like 2 minutes before, I legitimately accidentally took the metro ONE stop in the WRONG direction, could I please get on the metro 10 feet behind them. The only English they could muster was enough to tell me that my ticket was only valid for "one direction" which was obviously the wrong direction. So I had to validate another of Bernhard's tickets. Realistically, this is not a big deal at all. I didn't pay for the tickets and they're super cheap anyway. I just got really flustered and then had to feel stupid and humiliated while I sat and waited for the next metro (since I of course missed the first one since I was arguing with them). Lame...not a great experience.

When I got back to Bernhard's, I found Laura sitting in the living room. She hadn't left all day, which I took as a good sign of her having a slow, relaxing alone time day. She also thought it was 3 or 4 but really it was 5, so that was funny. Bernhard was on his second nap of the day after staying out til 3 the night before. We woke him up a while later and went shopping so that we could make Hungarian food for dinner! Exciting!

Hungarian food is pretty much paprika, paprika, and more paprika. It's delicious. Bernhard made potatoes with paprika and curry spice, and then chopped paprikas (the actual peppers) with onions and garlic and corn and paprkia spice and a spicy Hungarian sausage. And we drank some Hungarian beer with it all. It was a fantastic meal! I love love love cooking with / for my hosts slash eating the traditional food they cook for me :) It is WONDERFUL!

After that we were too full to really move, and we all had a quiet evening and went to bed at normal times!


Quotes:
"Um, I don't think I can use tampons to cook dinner." - Bernhard (our grocery store trip was for more than just food)

Accomplishments:
Went to the baths.
Spent time alone.
Ate a traditional Hungarian meal.

Travel Tip:
Alone time is a very nice thing. Work it into your schedules, even if it's not necessary.