Sensei Steve's Hungarian Drunktacular - Day 3
The next morning/afternoon I woke up and mosied on down to the bridge in question. Then the five of us went to the very intuitive subway line and got on a train for 45 minutes to go to the Baths. I didn’t realize until then how massive Budapest really is. When we exited the train we were in what looked like a huge park, hot dog (or some sub-par meat) vendors, and cotton candy vendors, and balloon animal makers, were everywhere we looked. We finally got to the “Bath” and looked like deer caught in headlights for about 20 minutes because we had no idea what to do. We finally figured out how to buy a ticket and get a locker and all that jiving. Changing was remarkably uncomfortable with a bunch of shriveled old Hungarian men jaunting around the locker room.
I finally managed to slather myself with sunscreen and move outside. For any of you right-wing Christians who have homosexual tendencies and Jesus won’t love you if you pursue them go ahead and visit a Hungarian Bath. If you think the male form still has anything resembling symmetry or beauty you’re definitely gay. A 350 pound bald man, whose body hair makes my chest look like the Gobi desert, frolicking in a speedo so small it doesn’t bother to hide the fact that he’s a well hung-arian is enough to blind a man for life. The women weren’t all that great either.
The bath itself was more like a public swimming pool, one pool was heated to body temperature, 98.6 and the other pool was a lot colder, maybe 60 degrees. Then their were the sauna’s. They were heated about equivalent to the surface of the sun. The first time I went in the sauna my eyes started boiling and I began speaking in tongues. After about thirty seconds I counted to ten and left. The little pool right outside the sauna would make a penguin’s member shrink. There were chunks of ice floating in it, but I dove in for about a third of a second, and then went back to the hot pool again. We repeated this cycle a dozen times or so over the course of the day; hot pool, cooler pool, sauna, freezing water, hot pool again.
The second time I went in the sauna I saw a bunch of old men, who looked like the blood and muscle had been sucked out of them, and all that was left was sagging wrinkly skin on bones. While I was counting to 30 before running out of the sauna, trying to pretend I was still a man, these guys were reading the god damn newspaper in there. We had a decent meal there, and some beer, we sat around chatted, read a little bit, I wrote a little poetry, and then we bailed on the bath and went back downtown. Before we did though we met up with one of the American guys from their hostel, I think he was from Prague. He mentioned they were celebrating tonight as a specific bar one of the British guys knew about. I asked what they were celebrating, and he informed me that today was in fact, the 4th of July.
As we left we had to say our goodbyes, the hot Brindian girl and her not as attractive friend were getting on a train and leaving the city in a few hours. The two British guys and I went back downtown, and went our separate ways, we would meet back at the bridge at 8 PM and head for the bar.
I wandered around the city for quite a few hours, and realized the lens of my camera was severely smudged so none of my pictures would come out, and went to 4 different camera stores that didn’t sell lens cleaner. I ate dinner somewhere and eventually wandered to the bridge to meet those British chaps.
Then the girls walk up to me, they missed their train, and after I laughed for a good spell we made our way toward the bar. On our way to the bar where the 4th of July was being celebrated we turned around six or seven times and gave up in a head on the sidewalk. The Brindian called the British guys on their cell and we told them we’d be waiting for them in front of this church, relating directions somehow. The funniest part about the whole conversation is that we must have passed 3 dozen churches and they all look exactly the same in the dark. So we waited for a half hour in front of this non-descript church for help to arrive. Eventually we told him we’d meet him back at the bridge, somehow.
Eventually we met up and made it to the bar, where everyone from the Hostel was sitting outside at a huge table. Collectively the group was comprised of 6 Americans, 6 Brits, 3 Norwegians, 4 Irish Girls, and 2 Canadian guys. We sat there for a long time talking about topics ranging from Philosophy to Pornography and closed out the bar. After that there was only one place to go.
So for the second night in a row, we found a 24 hour convenience store, bought a huge amount of cigars, beer, wine, chips, water, and snacks, and headed back to what has become our north star in Budapest, the sprawling courtyard in front of St. Peter’s Basilica. We got there and sat in a huge drunken hippy circle, and had an unaccompanied Karaoke jam, with every song people from five different countries knew. A lot of Beatles, Zeppelin and Rolling Stones mixed with Pink Floyd, pop music, and we all learned some Irish Folk ballads. Some of the highlights include a two man re-creation of the American Revolutionary war between me and one of the Brits, and 14 drunk internationals screaming the American National Anthem at the top of their lungs at three o’ clock in the morning. At one point the group was joined by 3 Israeli’s with a little dog named Elvis who sat and hung out for the rest of the night, and 3 Hungarian guys stumbling back from some party, who all happened to speak English. We returned to the corner store to re-up on supplies 2 or 3 times, and I loaned the most attractive Irish girl some cash for wine, with the promise of meeting up at the bridge at 2 PM the next day.
I finally managed to slather myself with sunscreen and move outside. For any of you right-wing Christians who have homosexual tendencies and Jesus won’t love you if you pursue them go ahead and visit a Hungarian Bath. If you think the male form still has anything resembling symmetry or beauty you’re definitely gay. A 350 pound bald man, whose body hair makes my chest look like the Gobi desert, frolicking in a speedo so small it doesn’t bother to hide the fact that he’s a well hung-arian is enough to blind a man for life. The women weren’t all that great either.
The bath itself was more like a public swimming pool, one pool was heated to body temperature, 98.6 and the other pool was a lot colder, maybe 60 degrees. Then their were the sauna’s. They were heated about equivalent to the surface of the sun. The first time I went in the sauna my eyes started boiling and I began speaking in tongues. After about thirty seconds I counted to ten and left. The little pool right outside the sauna would make a penguin’s member shrink. There were chunks of ice floating in it, but I dove in for about a third of a second, and then went back to the hot pool again. We repeated this cycle a dozen times or so over the course of the day; hot pool, cooler pool, sauna, freezing water, hot pool again.
The second time I went in the sauna I saw a bunch of old men, who looked like the blood and muscle had been sucked out of them, and all that was left was sagging wrinkly skin on bones. While I was counting to 30 before running out of the sauna, trying to pretend I was still a man, these guys were reading the god damn newspaper in there. We had a decent meal there, and some beer, we sat around chatted, read a little bit, I wrote a little poetry, and then we bailed on the bath and went back downtown. Before we did though we met up with one of the American guys from their hostel, I think he was from Prague. He mentioned they were celebrating tonight as a specific bar one of the British guys knew about. I asked what they were celebrating, and he informed me that today was in fact, the 4th of July.
As we left we had to say our goodbyes, the hot Brindian girl and her not as attractive friend were getting on a train and leaving the city in a few hours. The two British guys and I went back downtown, and went our separate ways, we would meet back at the bridge at 8 PM and head for the bar.
I wandered around the city for quite a few hours, and realized the lens of my camera was severely smudged so none of my pictures would come out, and went to 4 different camera stores that didn’t sell lens cleaner. I ate dinner somewhere and eventually wandered to the bridge to meet those British chaps.
Then the girls walk up to me, they missed their train, and after I laughed for a good spell we made our way toward the bar. On our way to the bar where the 4th of July was being celebrated we turned around six or seven times and gave up in a head on the sidewalk. The Brindian called the British guys on their cell and we told them we’d be waiting for them in front of this church, relating directions somehow. The funniest part about the whole conversation is that we must have passed 3 dozen churches and they all look exactly the same in the dark. So we waited for a half hour in front of this non-descript church for help to arrive. Eventually we told him we’d meet him back at the bridge, somehow.
Eventually we met up and made it to the bar, where everyone from the Hostel was sitting outside at a huge table. Collectively the group was comprised of 6 Americans, 6 Brits, 3 Norwegians, 4 Irish Girls, and 2 Canadian guys. We sat there for a long time talking about topics ranging from Philosophy to Pornography and closed out the bar. After that there was only one place to go.
So for the second night in a row, we found a 24 hour convenience store, bought a huge amount of cigars, beer, wine, chips, water, and snacks, and headed back to what has become our north star in Budapest, the sprawling courtyard in front of St. Peter’s Basilica. We got there and sat in a huge drunken hippy circle, and had an unaccompanied Karaoke jam, with every song people from five different countries knew. A lot of Beatles, Zeppelin and Rolling Stones mixed with Pink Floyd, pop music, and we all learned some Irish Folk ballads. Some of the highlights include a two man re-creation of the American Revolutionary war between me and one of the Brits, and 14 drunk internationals screaming the American National Anthem at the top of their lungs at three o’ clock in the morning. At one point the group was joined by 3 Israeli’s with a little dog named Elvis who sat and hung out for the rest of the night, and 3 Hungarian guys stumbling back from some party, who all happened to speak English. We returned to the corner store to re-up on supplies 2 or 3 times, and I loaned the most attractive Irish girl some cash for wine, with the promise of meeting up at the bridge at 2 PM the next day.
posted by Just1Wheat at
9:36 AM
