Baths, Bathrooms and Budapest

Ok, everyone, let's begin with the baths. It's in the middle of our equivalent to Central Park, NYC. They speak no English, and you walk in a huge, Greek looking, beautiful yellow building with a giant open outdoor bath area in the middle. The building itself is full of indoor baths, all temperatures, all different waters, all types of people. It is unlike any experience we have had. The outdoor consists of three giant pools. On one end, you have a 104 degrees pool where people sit, read, play chess and check you out. We were quite checked out in our surf attire. (Yes you wear clothes) Envision people who eat food cooked in goose lard in speedos, and you have it. In the middle a lap pool. Now I have to tell you, the "laps" were dog paddle speed, at best, and everyone wears a cap, no cap, big whistle blown at you. The third pool was most entertaining. It had an enema like jet that came up from the floor and you could hop around in it. It also had foot jets that you found by just walking on them, and the highlight of the day... a hot tub in the middle of the pool with an amazingly fast swirly eddy type thing around it... so you get in the hot tub, you soak, it stops, you get in the swirly thing, and it shoots you around really fast in a circle, and if you have no body fat, like Julie, you cannot get out. You have to be grabbed and rescued. This was to the Hungarians delight, the most entertaining moment of their day. We have found out that the Hungarians are a very depressed and oppressed people. The past still weighs heavily for them. They are quiet and do not laugh much. It was nice to see them laugh for just a moment. Their was one woman wearing a Marge Simpson like red bathing cap that got in the swirly circle and would run you over, much to her enjoyment. Upon arrival, we were ushered into an all white, sterile looking, hospital setting and taking through a maze of hallways and floors to a changing room. Thank goodness for our nice Hungarian towel boy who had to escort us to the toilet and then wait on us. We were lost. The place was huge, bigger than our convention center... now on to the bathrooms.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to bathroom signs. You have some in colors, green for boys, pink for girls (we think) some with the Hungarian words for boy and girl, some with artwork that must be of a time we don't know very well, and some with just "wc." So far it has required concentration that we sometimes don't have to figure this out. Also, Charmin is not available here, nothing soft and squeezable about this tp. Alrighty then... we have two more days in Budapest before heading to Eger, Hungary with Zsolt, our Servas buddy who is taking us to wine country. Then we think off to Vienna and then Prague. This is a change from the previous plans of going to Croatia. We will hit Croatia after Germany instead.