Szechenyi Baths and the Palinka Fesztival

We were supposed to go to Aquincum today, but since it's raining and the ruins are outside, it'll have to be postponed.  I think this is the universe's way of telling me to write my paper.

This weekend has been relatively awesome.  On Thursday night, I went out with Julie and Caitlin to Morrison's, because if you get there before 9, there's no cover charge, and we therefore achieved a FREE night of dancing (It's gotten to the point in the semester when spending money is getting difficult, since everyone seems to be running out).

We finally made it to Szechenyi Baths on Friday.  Budapest is famous for it's thermal baths, many of which are a remnant of the city's time under Turkish rule.  It was difficult choosing which to go to, but we narrowed it down based on price and location and rules...the baths have lots of protocols, apparently (My guidebook made it sound much more complicated than it actually was).  Some baths are only open to a certain sex on certain days, for example.  Some baths are fine with bathing suits while others provide you with some kind of cloth to cover up with.  Szenchenyi was a good choice for us because it was affordable and non-sex-segregated, which means wearing a bathing suit was fine.  It's located in City Park, so we got there on the Yellow Line.  Eventually we found a price list posted in English and if I remember correctly, a day pass (one entry) cost about 3100 HUF, which is around $16.  We were super confused as to what to do from there, though.  The wristbands we received did cool things like activate the turnstile to let us in, and lock/unlock our lockers.  But we couldn't figure out where the actual baths were because the inside was kind of maze-like (but not really, it just seemed really foreign to us, which it was), and some old man helped us out after watching us struggle for a while.  When we actually got into the bath part, we faced further confusion, because there are so many different rooms with individual pools with different temperatures, and we weren't sure if there was a specific recommended order or anything...we finally just got in a 38 C pool and it was super warm and felt very nice, although the smell of sulfur was unpleasant until we got used to it.  We rotated around for about two hours, keeping mostly to the 38 C and the 34 C.  There were some as cold as 15 C, though, which none of us were brave enough to enter.  There were also steam rooms and saunas.  And lots of men in Speedos (awkward).  All in all, it was a relaxing experience once we got past the initial stress of figuring out what to do, and I recommend it if you're gonna be in Budapest at any point- just make sure you drink lots of water because I didn't and I felt really sick afterwards from the dehydration.  I also wish I'd taken pictures but the air was too steamy to bring a camera in.

I got home and washed out all of the minerals from my hair and de-sulfured before taking a much needed nap, because the baths are somehow completely exhausting.  I woke up, felt sick, tried to eat food, and piddled around on the really slow Internet before heading over to Laura and Julie's.  I brought them some flour and sugar and stuff I wasn't gonna use before the end of the semester, since time is running out and all.  Laura cooked macaroni and cheese as well as chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting, while Caitlin made some kind of unidentified meat for them as well.  In the meantime, we attempted to get the Internet to let us watch the new Lady Gaga video, which I wasn't too impressed with but Dani liked.  The food was good, of course, and we watched The Hangover because neither Caitlin nor Julie had seen it, and we'd been seeing previews for it's sequel (in Hungarian) in the movie theater, which made us want to watch the original.

Saturday was supposed to be my paper-writing day.  I skipped out on IKEA for lunch, which is what my friends had planned for the day.  But then I found out that there was a festival going on, and I've been wanting to go to a Hungarian festival.  I got on Facebook and tried to see who was awake in hopes that they'd accompany me to the Palinka Festival, and succeeded in rustling up 4 others.  Palinka is like, Hungarian brandy or schnapps, I think, and I tried a little of it at the festival and thought it was terrible, but I guess some people like it or else it wouldn't have a festival dedicated to it.  That payment system at the festival was strange because you had to put money on a card and the vendors only accepted this card.    The Hungarian food available there looked rather awful to me, also.  But despite all of that, it was located at Buda Castle and it was a beautiful day; I'm glad I got to experience it.

 

That night I saw Source Code with Laura, Dani, Caitlin, and Julie.  I rather enjoyed it.

But now, I actually should write that paper...