Friday, the 20th of July
11:30 AM

I start my writing sitting on a bench in a small green square with fountains and a playground for children. According to my map, that must be ‘Honved ter’. At least I know for sure that one of its sides is Szemere Street. I open a bar of my favourite extra dark chocolate, ‘Roshen Brut’ – I brought it from Kyiv along with other travelling snacks and have kept it until this minute. (Kyiv… I’m already so homesick…) <…> *Oh God, I wish it were cooler than 40˚C and my chocolate were a snack, not a drink*

View from my park bench



(16.07.07)

Trinity Square – unfortunately, the monument there was taken away for renovation. Well, five years ago I did get a glimpse of it. Nice medieval (or renaissance, I’m bad at such niceties) streets… an old theatre where Beethoven gave a public concert… the President’s residence (nothing around it that could show one that this is not an ordinary mansion). The Royal Palace – this time only a brief look through the gate. We walk back to Disz ter, get on our bus and drive over Chain Bridge (or Széchenyi Bridge, after the great count István Széchenyi).  

Chain Bridge - a popular shootview, isn't it?)

***
…Central European time 13:10. I sit in a café (or a pizzeria, they serve pizza here) – Nádor Kavéház in Nádor Street 19 (I write from the menu). I was simply tired of walking in 40˚C, this talk of the town (probably the temperature’s higher, according to my feelings). So I came to the first café which seemed to be not something terribly posh and expensive. It’s small, two-storied and cozy. The hostess doesn’t speak a word in English, German, French or Russian – my foreign languages; fortunately by this day I’ve learnt to read menus in Hungarian. Pizza – quite clear:), as well as ‘kávé espresso’ (and ‘üdítok’ seems to mean drink in general). I choose their ‘déli menü’ – 24 cm pizza of your choice (I pointed on the word ‘salami’ and on a drawing of a mushroom), 200 ml (they call this quantity 20 dl) of Coca/Fanta/Sprite and ‘kávé’. At this very moment I am waiting for my salami&mushrooms. 
My Lunch

Around 1 PM our free time began. Some of us went to the zoo, some chose the Luna park. I was among those who went to the famous Széchenyi Spa Baths (Széchenyi fürdo), a nice neo-Baroque building. 2400 forints for four hours, 200 of them repaid for every hour unspent. The baths are really, really nice. There are 11 (I counted them intentionally) indoor pools, from small to rather large ones. The temperature varies from about 15˚C up to 40˚ (or even 42˚C). Again, underwater seats everywhere. After a long journey I felt dizzy and almost fainting, but some repeated submersions, done in turn in the 15˚C and the 40˚C pool made me feel alive.

***
4 PM. Finally after hours of walk I ‘landed’ in a café. A tiny confectionery with two round tables. Again only one of two women behind the counter understands some words in English. The punch cake is ‘comme ci comme ça’; kind of a chocolate muffin with thick marzipan icing is better… But at least an item costs 230 forints, not 500 or 1000! My thought returns to Széchenyi Baths…

(16.07.07. still:)
Yes, the Baths were fantastic! I noted already the number of indoor pools. Among them were one with a stream, another, where a coach showed everyone aqua fitness, three (or was it four?) Finnish or dry saunas, two of them included pools of cold water and tubs full of ice… a ‘Russian sauna’ – the sweating room with steam. Outdoors there were three large pools, two with streams for hydro massage, there also was a big section with powerful stream which turned the pool into kind of a merry-go-round. The third was the only deep one. I wished to have a swim – I adore swimming and dislike places not deep enough. But I wasn’t allowed to: only those with bath caps are. Do they think there exists a bath cap to be pulled over my whole amount of hair? I spent quite enough time by making a ‘Hairstyle for Bathing’, in order not to let a lock to become wet.
Still, as I’ve said, I had fantastic time in the Baths.

***
Five cups of tea and two cakes… I am leaving the café. The evening hasn’t fallen yet!

Tuesday, the 17th of July
11:14 – inside the bus on my way to Tata, Györ, etc.

Sooo… Miskolc-Tapolca. We spent four hours in the cave pools. I’ve been there already, as I’ve said, five years ago. Since then new pools have been added to the labyrinth inside the mountain. There also are several outdoor pools. How grand it is to swim in those surroundings!  Probably the most exciting pool is the one with a ceiling like sky at night, covered with stars. This hall is considerably darker than other ones; it’s illuminated with changing colourful lights (crimson, yellow, ultramarine…). In various pools there are attractions like jacuzzi (kind of), artificial streams and eddies. In practically all of them there are bancs by the walls, to sit on while the whole body is in thermal medicinal water. (The depth nowhere exceeds 130 cm. I realize that these are rather medicinal baths, not swimming pools - but I prefer deep pools where one can have a decent swim).  Anyway, the pools in Miskolc-Tapolca are great and I had a good time there.

My Photos of cave pools in Miskolc-Tapolca



***********************


And a more professional and descriptive photo I found on my arrival home

We arrived in Budapest before eight o’clock, from the Pest side. Passed the beautiful central boulevards and squares, crossed the river… then the comparatively historical part of Buda (for here they build ugly monsters of concrete, gray panels, steel and glass side by side with masterpieces of bygone centuries). We passed this also. Soon we’re heading through a district which looks more and more like a suburb. It turned out that our tour manager was lost (sic!) and we drove too far to the west. Then it turned out that the streets were too narrow, in addition to that some patches of the road were being renovated…  I mean the drivers had great difficulties in getting to the hotel. Many of the group were terribly disappointed by the location of the hotel and the professionalism of the tour managers (I mean they did express all this).

Well, I’d also wished the hotel were next to some underground station, as it was in Prague. Still, I wasn’t exactly promised this – and seven tram stops from Moszkva tér (Moscow Square), an important road junction with an underground station. Probably I’ll be able even to walk from my hotel to the historical part of Buda – I am a walker… However, Victoria R., an old lady who shares the room with me, became very angry, she was violently discussing the matter for quite a long time with our tour manager, Michael (or Mikhailo, actually). Finally we got our magnet card keys (I was nicely surprised to get my own one) and took the lift to our room.

There was one more unpleasant incident of the evening. No, not that serious, I simply learnt that another my expectation turned into a shattered illusion. I know well that summer is not the season for theatres, still, I hoped. I even managed before my departure to find the repertoires of Budapest opera and operetta. Opera was closed, and operetta – operetta gave its last performance on Saturday, the evening I was tasting wine at Tokay! Helas, cruelle destinée (©Gounod, ‘Faust’) Hope wasn’t dead yet and short after putting my bag on the carpet by the bed I descended to talk with the receptionist. He was quite nice and printed me the repertoires of some theatres. Good news: not all the theatres ‘are on vacation’, ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ is on! (I wouldn’t write here how much this musical composition, or even the story itself does mean to me). Bad news: the performance is tonight – probably the second act has just begun. Next performance in this theatre – next Saturday (or the night I’ll be passing Ukrainian border). ‘Christine, Christine… why, why?’

To finish, here’s a description of my room-mate. She is in her late sixties, lives in Kharkiv alone (in fact she lets a room of her flat to an Arabian student). She spends quite a lot of time in Moscow, for her daughter’s family lives there. Her son-in-law is quite a man of fortune: for example, only this year they have visited Egypt thrice and at that moment the family was having a holiday in Spain. Mrs. R. travels a lot herself and wants to get if not luxury, let’s say, all possible comforts.  A ‘five stars plus’ hotel in Turkey impressed her so much that she is constantly comparing the disadvantages of this trip to ‘Turkish bliss’. I find this very silly: these are very different kinds of tours! If one wants to lie on the beach, to be fed well four times a day, to have staff hurrying around – one should go to special resorts. And I like the visits to European cities for special ambience and my personal freedom. Not to depend much on the hotel, to go walking the ancient streets shortly after breakfast and to the twilight (or later), to have a meal when you are hungry, with a possibility to choose a canteen – or a respectable restaurant (during this trip I’d love to have at least several really luxurious meals)… I should have the whole town at my disposal; I don’t want confinement in a tiny garden around some Turkish hotel. Then I came here also for guided tours, to learn facts and legends about Hungarian kings and nobility… Mrs. R. loathes these hours of standing and walking, these captivating stories – ‘As we don’t have enough of our own princes!’ To conclude about her: she will always find faults with everything and everybody (for example, she claims herself to be a very intellectual person and an interesting interlocutor, calling others in the group banal, vulgar, etc.) She will talk late in the evening, already in bed, not letting me fall asleep (or write a decent account in my diary). Anyway, at least she seems to like me and consider me ‘a nice, modest and shy girl’. And I have an opportunity to write about her here;)

Wednesday, the 18th of July
Half past eight in the morning

Once again I am sitting in our bus, waiting for the departure – this time to Balaton, the great Hungarian lake. But better to pass immediately to the day before yesterday, when our bus tour around Budapest took place.

The bus left a parking lot near the hotel at eight. At Moszkva tér our guide joined us. Natalie is a native Ukrainian who has been living in Hungary for 32 years already. She is to tell us special information about the sights, Hungarian past and present day, etc. (while Michael is just a group manager in general). After passing a very long tunnel and Adam Clark Square we make our first stop beneath Fishermen’s Bastion. The stairs lead to Matthias Church…