Gloomy Sunday

27.10.2019 - 27.10.2019
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I woke early in the morning feeling well, my stomach had settled down, but I felt very drained and fatigued. As I get older I notice that I'm getting better at interpreting the signs that my body is trying to communicate to me. So I decided to have a slow, easy day today.

It was nearly ten when I ambled down the street to the bus interchange next to the railway station. Everything was shrouded in dense fog, a fog so thick that even sounds were muffled. Not a single bird was singing, there was barely a car on the street, only the peals of distant church bells full of impending doom broke the silence. It truly was a Gloomy Sunday. I whistled "Gloomy Sunday" just to break the oppressive silence, and even started singing it ("Szomorú vasárnap szaz fehér virággal ...")

I didn't have to wait long for a bus to Hévíz about seven kilometres northwest of Keszthely. After ten minutes on empty roads I got off. Hévíz is a town whose sole reason of existence is the town's namesake, an enormous hot spring, a veritable lake several hundred metres across, the largest thermal bath in the world. (Lake Rotorua in New Zealand is larger but Hévíz claims Rotorua can't be used for bathing. I invite Kiwis to comment if I need to be corrected. I look forward to a Kwi vs Magyar flame war!)

The town of Hévíz is a collection of surprusingly large high-rise hotels, spa and massage treatment centres, expensive antique and bric-a-brac stores, ice cream parlours and other places whose primary purpose is to suck the money out of the wallets of visitors. I tried to find breakfast but except for ice cream parlours and a couple of bakeries nothing was open. So I just had a couple of pastries and a tiny cup of scalding hot, bitter Hungarian coffee for breakfast. Coffee in Hungary normally consists of just a shot of boiling espresso. If you order "kávé tejjel" (coffee with milk), you just get a shot of espresso with a teaspoon of milk added. For what Australians would consider a white coffee, you need to specify "latté", but that doesn't appear on every coffee shop's menu.

I waited twenty-five minutes in the queue to get into Hévíz. I couldn't believe how difficult most people found purchasing admission. In their defence, there was a wide range of admission products for sale: two-hour, four-hour, daily, multi-day passes, with sauna, without sauna, and all sorts of beauty and massage treatment supplements. I ended up buying a four-hour pass with sauna for five thousand forints.

I changed into my swimmers and thongs, walked out along a long, enclosed pier to a pavillion in the centre of the lake, and went down into the water under the pavillion. The water directly underneath the pavillion is the warmest in the entire lake. After a short while I went back into the pavillion and swam outside in the fresh air where the water was less crowded. The water was still warm, had a mild sulphuric smell that wasn't unpleasant, and left my skin and hair feeling silky. The bottom of the lake was surprisingly slimy - there's a species of seaweed that thrives on sulphur that grows thickly on the bed of the lake.

I went for a nice big swim around the lake, it was good to engage in a form of exercise that wasn't walking everywhere or carrying fifteen kilograms on my back. The weather was mostly sunny, partly cloudy, low twenties. Perfect.

The only criticism I have of Hévíz is that it wasn't very social. I remember going to hot springs at Wulai in Taiwan and the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, and how at those thermal baths there was something in the water that gave every single visitor an instant feeling of contentment and belonging. It was like one big party of brotherhood, sisterhood and innocent love. Everyone at Wulai and the Blue Lagoon were best friends with each other, and had been since the dawn of time, and will be until the end of days. There was none of that convivial bomhomie at Hévíz. I am not sure if it was because of the chemical composition of the water, or because they were Hungarian. Probably the latter. Not even the warm, soothing waters of Hévíz could melt that Hungarian ice.

As I was swiming to the far side of the lake, my hand hit a small hard object in the grey-green murky water. I felt around and discovered what I hit - a shell, maybe an inch and a half long, shaped like an ice cream cone, with the most delicate swirling pink and cream colours. Molluscs can survive in these hot sulphuric waters! I was amazed. Nearby was a middle-aged couple talking in German. I introduced myself in German and they introduced themselves back. I showed the woman the shell and she was amazed too, so I gave the couple the shell. I sort of regret not keeping it, but I doubt Australian quarantine would let me keep an animal product like that.

After swimming around the lake I walked across another enclosed pier to the sauna setion. There are four different saunas - an "infrasauna" (only 45C), an ordinary sauna (83C), an extremely hot sauna where nudity was mandatory and everyone had to sit on wrappers provided for the purpose (95C), and a steam room lined with tiles instead of wood. There was a cold water plunge pool which you were supposed to go into after using the sauna. I did this and instantly jumped out, the thermal shock was too great to withstand.

The sauna section also had a shallow pool full of small, rounded stones which you walked on to massage your feet, and two separate jacuzzis. Every jacuzzi I have ever been in has been a happy, social place, but not here.

By Australian standards I am very introverted. I live by myself, and while I enjoy the company of my friends reasonably often I am often just as happy doing tasks by myself - going on long bike rides or bushwalks, for instance. I will go to a pub for a couple of beers and friendly conversation with a mate but sometimes I will go to a pub by myself just to chill out for a bit. In Australia, a country of forcibly cheerful hyper-social extroverts, this makes me a weirdo loner. It is only since I came to Hungary that I realise how much I depend on social contact and maybe I'm not such an introvert after all.

In the sauna section there was also a salt room. Salt rooms are all the rage nowadays, there's even one in the Mid North Coast town where my mother lives. I thought they were a load of bull, just quackery to get money from gullible people. I entered the salt room at Hévíz skeptically. The dim room consisted of plastic outdoor chairs in a room where the walls were built of rock salt bricks. I sat down and thought to myself "this is a load of rot! This is just a boring room full of idiot oldies who think this crap really will cure their arthritis or blood pressure!" But after five minutes sitting in that silent room, something happened. This feeling of perfect well-being, relaxation and contentment overtook every atom of my body. All the niggling little pains that come from travelling independently - the joint pains, the calluses and blisters, the muscle aches that come from walking incredible distances every day and lugging a backpack from city to city on public transport - disappeared. My skin, wet from swimming in the lake, dried very quickly and became very smooth and taut. My lungs became less asthmatic and breathing became pure and effortless.

Hévíz recommends that you spend no more than thirty minutes in the salt room so I reluctantly left and went back outside. There was a mud pool outside the pavillion where you could smear mud from the bottom of the lake all over yourself. I can't say this gave me a sense of well-being. I showered the mud off, went swimming around the lake again, and had to leave because I ws about to reach my four-hour limit.

I caught the bus back to Keszthely. There were two more attractions I wanted to visit in Keszthely - the Festetics Palace and the Hungarian Model Railway Museum which was in the same complex as Festetics Palace. My trusty Lonely Planet said both closed at six. It was shortly after four when I got back to Kesthely.

First, I was starving. There was a small bar at the palace which sold toasted sandwiches and other snacks. I bought a grilled cheese and salami toastie, paid my bill then went into the palace, only to find that the ticket office was shut. In the off season, the palace closes at five and the ticket office closes at four.

Damn. It was half past four. I ran across the road to the model railway museum hoping that hadn't shut early too. I bolted up the driveway to the front door open to see a security guard come out and tell me that it was closed.

Double damn. At least the Festetics Palace grounds were still open. The palace is a magnificent baroque residence built in the eighteenth century by a local noble family, the Festetics clan, who were notable patrons of science and agriculture. They founded an agricultural college in Keszthely that is still Hungary's main institute of higher learning for agricultural science. There are perfectly symmetrical gardens, a sinuous pond with a footbridge over it, groves of trees with autumn leaves, a coach house that is five times as large as most people's own houses, amd a great view over the town of Keszthely. It was pleasant enough just to walk through the grounds in the twilight.

I went off to find dinner. Keszthely was closed. I walked down the main street and into the town square and the only businesses open at half past five on a Sunday afternoon were two cafés serving coffee and cakes. I needed something more substantial. There was a Coop supermarket but it was shut. This was worse than Sundays in Australia when I was a kid before they liberalised trading hours restrictions in the 1990s.

Eventually I found a nice little restaurant on a side street in a residential neighbourhood, the Park Restaurant, a family-owned affair that served traditional Hungarian fare. Creamy garlic soup was the entrée folowed by a main course of pörkölt with nokedli washed down with a tantalising local red wine the name of which I forget. In Hungary, goulash is actually a soup. The thick stew that Australians call "goulash" is closer to what Hungarians call "pörkölt", though pörkölt doesn't necessarily have the vegetables like potatoes and carrots that goulash has. It was a great meal, the size of the portions was enormous and even though I was starving I had trouble finishing it. Dessert was strictly out of the question! It was certainly a fitting last meal - well, last proper meal - for my visit to Hungary.

Gloomy Sunday in Keszthely