Budapest Day 4: Soaking it Up & On the Rails

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If the Hungarians are like the Germans then the Romanians are definitely like the French. We’ve been on the Ister EuroNight 371 now for about 3 hours since departure from Budapest and as much as the Hungarians respected non-smoking policies, our Romanian neighbors do not. As anything German vs. French, there are benefits and what we will call “dis-benefits”. The benefits are we can actually understand the Romanian language quite well while the Hungarians, as our Lonely Planet guidebook says, are “incomprehensible” in their native tongue. The dis-benefit is that whereas the Hungarians only crossed at crosswalks and strictly obeyed the signals (this Frenchman not doing the same), the Romanians seem to embrace the more casual approach to “rules”.


EN371 “Ister” Budapest Keleti to Bucuresti Gara Nord
We found our arrangements on our little train with a lot less trouble than we had expected. Keleti only has about a dozen platforms on a single level which makes things easy and there are mostly German and some English translations which makes things even easier. The Ister is “little” due to its shortness of only about 8 cars, we are the second from the locomotive in a CFR (Romanian Railways) wagon-lits which looks like a ‘60s wood paneling throwback but experience tells us is more like early ‘90s post-Communism. It smells like smoke and our handy little Clorox wipes took off a nice gray coating from key surfaces, but otherwise the sheets look clean and it’s pretty much what we expected.


Bathing in Budapest
We spent our last day in Budapest doing two things - visiting the famous Gellert Baths and freeloading from the Hilton Executive Lounge.

The Gellert Baths were more of an experience for Jennifer who thought we were landing at the ultra-luxurious spa at the Four Seasons-type of experience but was more of a classic public bath-type of an experience. Once expectations were agreeably adjusted we had a great time. Jennifer went for a massage and after a bit of coaxing to remove not only her top but also her bottom, she had an incredible 15 minute experience at the hands of Hungarian little masseuse (but that Manny likes to call "man-hands" for no real basis other than its funny) who provided an unexpected buttocks rub-down as part of the full-back sequence. In Jennifer’s defense, there were plenty of Bluto Blutarsky (that’s Belushi in Animal House) look-a-likes “working” in the women’s massage area and the paper-thin curtains did not allow for much modesty. Evidently either Jennifer’s buttocks or the affability of “man-hands” made her massage stall the social hub of the hour as every other masseuse was coming in to converse (or, according to Jennifer, to admire her butt).

The bath was a 19th century facility (we weren’t able to go to any of the historical Turkish baths since they were male-only) with steam room, warm and warmer thermal baths, hot and cold swimming pools, etc. It was really a very beautiful and ornate facility in every aspect (except maybe the changing rooms) and was reasonably clean. On the flipside, for anyone reading this blog who may someday plan on visiting a bath in Budapest, here are a few recommendations that we would have loved for our silly DK or LP Guides to provide:

* Bring your own towels as they otherwise get you in for what is still somewhat expensive by Hungarian terms (not by ours), and then when you ask (soaking wet in our case) for towels they tell you its an extra 4800HUF, or about $25 for towels!!!
* If you forget the towels or want to “stick it to the man” (or woman, in our case), go find one of the many hair/body dryers located on the mezzanine level between the wave pool and changing rooms at the Gellert, they’re free and they did a nice job on Manny and they are the wand-type, perfect for directing hot air in all those hard-to-reach places!
* Bring sandals! The locals know what they’re doing and just because you see them running around with overstuffed old plastic bags doesn’t mean they’re bag ladies, they just know the game the baths are running on tourists. We had no substitute for our lack of sandals so we are waiting for the planter’s warts to set in one of these days.


The Magyar Maze
After the baths we took off up the nearby Gellert Hill (named after St. Gellert who was martyred into the depths of the Danube nearby) and visited Hungary’s poor early 20th century imitation of Lourdes in a hillside cavern. At the top of said hill is the citadel built by the Austrians in the 18th century to quell any future uprisings by the pesky Hungarians. We didn’t make it all the way up there because a fortress is a fortress and the mid-50s temperatures, biting wind, drenching rain (not hard enough to get you to bring a raincoat, but just enough to teach you a lesson and thoroughly soak you), and what is arguably the highest hill in hilly Budapest made a convincing argument against further ascension. What did happen is that Manny didn’t bring his map but was steadfastedly opposed to taking the same riverbank path we had taken on the way out and instead we kept going higher and higher trying to circumvent Gellert Hill, ultimately making us have to climb up and down Gellert and then up Castle Hill (these are not small hills), leading to a trip that would normally have been a 20 minute walk into 45 minutes. But we did see a number of houses up there on the hill that reminded us of our ride along Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills, so at least we got to see how they live it up in Budapest.

Finally back at the hotel we took advantage of our late checkout with cappuccino and hot chocolate at the Executive Lounge and then a couple hot showers, then down to the lobby to wait for train-time 3 hours away only to realize what the rest of the world was paying for beers at the Hilton - $7.50 a piece - leading us straight back to the Executive Lounge for more freeloading à la Cato Cailin. Our “roughing it” attire; matching Eddie Bauer luggage; and loud card playing appeared to be much to the distress of an older American couple who loudly asked the attendant how they controlled who was in the lounge and how they knew if someone was a “Diamond VIP” or not. She gave her answer but the joke was on them since we got away with our Gold VIP . . . sucker (it was legitimate and we weren't REALLY freeloading . . . except for the fact that we were checked out)!

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Photos

Love Birds
In our sleeper compartment on EN371 Ister

Our Romanian Rail Car
Taken at the Bucharest Gara de Nord.

CFR Sleeper Compartment
Our room on the Ister EN371 from Budapest to Bucharest.

Just trying to stay warm . . .
Hungarian style! That stuff is gross!

The John
Everyone wants to know what it looks like (we think), so here it is. This is a common bathroom to the car.

The World Famous Gellert Baths . . .
. . . in the world that is Budapest, that is. When it comes to baths, there is a flavor for everyone in this city. These are supposed to be the nicest.

Gellert Lobby
Naked people running all over this place!

Us on Gellert Hill
The hill rises out of the earth like stone dagger right next to the Danube, great view and crazy cold!

Comments

[Chris]

Hope you're having fun!