Rudas is just down the hill from my friend’s pad. It is a bathhouse built around one of the many natural springs here in Budapest. In the morning, after a coffee, we drive there. Entry costs about £16.
They built this in about 1580 and much of it has barely changed since then. Generations of people have communed with the water spirits here. When we get there it is already pretty crowded but there’s space.
The main bath chamber is one huge dim room. We start in the saunas that gradually get hotter as you go deeper. Then a quick plunge and we get into the coldest bath. Each of the pools is fed by a different spring. The whole room whiffs of sulphur. Some of the springs are so complex with mineral that they have developed huge whorls of calcification around the feeder area. People lie and bob about in various states of torpor. There are 5 baths. The first four get hotter as you go. Then the fifth is body temperature, to readjust after the hottest one which is 42 degrees. By the time we have gone all the way round once I’m feeling absolutely whacked out. I almost fall asleep in one of them for a moment.
“My dad told me that the water is radioactive,” says Maté after an hour or so. “It’s probably good for us.”
It’s been so good to see Maté. We sat next to each other when we were told we had gotten into Guildhall. A shift in the life course, for sure. He works over here now. And he’s carved a good life for himself. This was always a flying visit, but despite the airmiles I’m very very happy to have made the effort.
Apart from Rudas, he showed me much of his town. It’s a good town, full of fine things. We have rested well and eaten well. Many dumplings.
From tomorrow it’s two jobs a day plus line learning for the next week. I didn’t have to go to Hungary to relax but it helped. In early afternoon I caught Mariann as well, a university friend, I haven’t seen her this millennium. Astonishing to think of the passage of time. If I break it down I know how busy I’ve been, but 25 years is a frightening amount of time. She was much the same. We had coffee.
I’ll be back to Budapest, back to the springs in spring I think. Now I’ve carved the path, I’ll carve it again and see Maté play his Hamlet in Hungarian. What a treat though to see him, his mum, his brother on this flying visit. To remember his dad. And he knew my mum, too, she was active meeting my friends when I was at college. I’m grateful for it now, for the shared memories she brought. For old friends and the passage of time.
I’ll be exhausted when we land though. And then I’ll have to drive home past that dastardly speed camera that is in process for me right now.
AlBarclay 