Day 137: Turkish Baths

In the afternoon I went with two annoying German girls and one extremely annoying American to one of Budapest's spas.

It took 7.5 kilometers of walking to get there (only 4.5km on the way back, after we decided to actually look at a map). I've never really been to a spa before, besides the sauna or hot bath facilities you occasionally find at gyms, but the place seemed nice and well layed out. There's a Turkish bath in the center and cooler baths in two of the corners. They have a few wet saunas, each with room for about 8 bodies. You feed the hot rocks scented water with a wooden dowel spoon and it adds "wet" heat to the room (whatever that means). We were using the water with moderation, until a group of Hungarians joined us in the sauna and showed us how it's really done. After a few spoonfuls of holy water, the temperature felt like it had shot up 10 degrees Centigrade. But the most affecting part was the sinus annihilating fragrance that had been mixed into the water. One of the German girls and the American twat had to leave because they couldn't stand the heat, literally speaking.

The dimwit American had a crush on one of the German girls, and the first thing that duffer did once we stepped into the Turkish bath was pick her up and give her the good ol' frat boy slam into the pool. Keep in mind this is a spa, where cosmopolitan 30-somethings sit around quietly discussing their pension fund annuity options.

Thirty minutes later we found ourselves in one of the cooler, corner pools. At some point the daft bugger decided that eye contact was sufficient consent to force himself upon the German girl in a steamy, lip-locked embrace -- with her friend and myself as audience.

Trying to be open minded here, you could tell that the German girl was enjoying the attention, but her friend and I had already experienced enough cringe to fuel six seasons worth of Spanish soap operas.

Later, we were de-cringing in the jacuzzi when the non-twitterpated German girl left to swim laps in a different pool. I took the opportunity to spread out, close my eyes, and mind my own business. Miss Fräulein and G.I. Joe didn't share my sense of expansiveness and sat on top of each other. Five minutes later they too left, but within 10 minutes Popeye had come back to pay me a visit and tell me all about how he was going to kill me "later", how if I had left earlier they would have had sex in the jacuzzi, and how blue his balls were. Asshole.

At least the walk back had a nice view?

After arriving back at the hostel I arranged to meet up with the friends I had met yesterday on the walking tour. I told them I'd be by the pool above the bar we were at yesterday at 10, with a bottle of white wine for sharing. Twenty minutes past ten I asked a nearby group to watch my wine for me while I go down into "the hole" to get the wifi password and hopefully figure what was going on.

When I came back ten minutes later I asked the group if they still had my wine and they told me they had no idea what I was talking about. We talked for a bit (they were Hungarian, but at least one of them, the sole guy of the group, spoke English). He kept asking me how drunk I was, though I was practically sober. After five minutes of chit chat they bid me adieu, leaving me confused and alone. To add to the mixed emotions, five minutes later I received a message from one of my friends asking me to meet her at a bar. As a matter of principle, I should have been angry that those Hungarians stole my wine after I had asked them to watch it, but it had only cost me 2.5 USD, none of my friends had shown up to help me drink it, and I would have had to ditch it anyways now that I was going to a bar (so it might as well have been stolen).

My friend and I were meeting at a bar to connect with a pub crawl that was currently ongoing. While waiting for her to arrive, I met and chatted with some lovely British blokes (most positive experience I'd had all day). Almost as soon as my friend showed up we were on to the next bar. The place was packed, and it took me 45 minutes just to order a beer for myself and my friend. Naturally, we moved on to a club 15 minutes after that, giving me ample time to leave two half finished beers on the table. I'd had enough of buying alcohol for one day, so I spent the next hour fraternizing with my friend's friends and busting lame dance moves. At some point I realized I wasn't having fun and today was just an all-around shitty day, so I walked back towards the hostel. One of my friend's friends, a New Yorker I had met at the club, joined me and we chatted in Franz Liszt Square before I walked her back to her hostel and I retired for the night back to my own -- thankfully relatively early at 2:30 in the morning.