Sixty One Degrees

A day at the baths, a night at the opera

Budapest, Hungary

Who would have thought ballet could be funny? Certainly not me. But the guy that played the Toy Maker in Coppelia was hilarious. And I was only there because I was too cheap to take the Opera House tour.

The day started with a trip to the Széchenyí baths, the biggest of Budapest dozen or so thermal spas. Upon entering you're greeted by the unusual sight of underwater chess. Well, half underwater, as a collection of guys stand chest deep in the large warm pool and play on boards set at water level, oblivious to the occasional wave splashing over the pieces.

The choice of watery delights is abundant: three outdoor pools at different levels of warm, seeming all the warmer with piles of snow on the pavements; and indoors, a vast array of hot pools, cold pools and saunas. One pool has jets along the edge creating a giant whirlpool effect that would zoom you around. I have no idea what the point was but it was great fun.

That night I found myself at the ballet in the city's magnificent opera house. I wanted to see the interior and was about to join the tour bus crowd on the expensive afternoon tour when I noticed that I could get a ticket to a performance for half the price of the tour - interior views included for free! I didn't much care what I saw but the ballet turned out to be excellent. I surprised myself. At intermission I mingled with Budapest's finest, carefully blending in with my patched boots and faded clothes, sipping Tokaj and discussing the finer points of the ballet with a nice German lady.

The cultural onslaught continued the next night as I went to see Turandot at the new opera house, a concrete structure that's not a patch on the old opera house. I thought the lead soprano was a bit of a squawker and was pleased to have a local opera fan, and member of the Wagner Society, confirm the view. "I didn't like her Brunhilda either", she confided.

On my last night in Budapest the couple I was staying with took me to the perfect antidote to all this high culture - a small cafe showing a Buster Keaton film with a live jazz accompaniment. Just the thing.

Taking the waters

Héviz, Hungary

It's -4°C, snowing, and I'm swimming in an outdoor pool. I'm taking the waters at Héviz, a five hectare natural thermal pool in central Hungary.

The water temperature is supposedly 25°C today but it's the coldest 25°C I've encountered. Inside the covered pavilion it's a much more civilised 33°C.

My ticket is good for three hours but after thirty minutes I'm already getting bored with paddling around. The novelty of swimming in snow is wearing off. But most of my swimming companions, all sixty plus and here in search of medical cures, will be here all day and every day for two or three weeks. The minimum for a course of "the waters".

But I'm done. It's off to a town with a younger crowd and a bit more life. Off to Budapest!