Land of Thermal Baths

“According to a Colgate-Palmolive survey, Americans average about 11 minutes in the shower and spend about 20 minutes in a typical bath, hardly time for an in-depth cleaning. The Japanese, who take much longer baths, are certainly far more fastidious than the Americans. But Americans and Japanese are all barbarians by the standards of the Romans, who sweated, soaked and were rubbed, scrubbed and strigiled clean.” (Jay Stuller, quoted from Smithsonian Magazine 1991)

It was Romans who, in the first century, built the Aquincum in the current Budapest area. The Latin expression "aqua quinque" was the origin of the Aquincum, which means “five waters”. Budapest apparently followed a similar path as the British city Bath, but with much more turbulence because of frequent changes by occupants Romans, Turks, King Matthias Corvinus, Habsburgs, etc. Budapest had over 50 such facilities. Best known are Gellert, Lukacs, Rudas, Szechenyi, with the gorgeous buildings. I read that the geological features of the Carpathian Basin are such that the Earth’s crust is very thin, so water rises easily to the surface. It is not an exaggeration when one says that you could push a stick into the ground anywhere and up would come thermal water.

Hungary is a land of more than 1,000 hot springs and has enough spa facilities to accommodate 300,000 people at the same time. These spas are located in big cities, Eger, Gyor, Harkány Mako, and Szeged as well as smaller towns throughout the country. Even smaller places like Hévíz, Hajdúszoboszló, Bükkfürdö, and Zalakaros are the destination of not just European tourists but also the locals.

Lately, I was surprised to see a super modern resort hotel with a huge swimming pool, sauna and spa at Salt Hill Spawil at Egerszalok, northeastern Hungary, 80 kilometers from Budapest near the Slovakian border. A fancy ad is on the Internet written in Japanese. The wellness / fitness spa tourism seems to be booming in Hungary.

In Japan, there are about 3,000 hot springs and hotels and inns associated with them number over 20,000. However, bathing culture and customs are quite different between Hungary and Japan, so comparison is not easy. For instance, hot springs in Japan is not meant primarily for swimming. But, we certainly share the benefits of medicinal and healing properties the earth made available for us.

Millennium Subway

A subway is much easier to ride than a bus when foreigners try to scramble around an unfamiliar country. Taipei became friendlier to me when its MRT System opened in the late 1990s. I could go north or south, east or west as I pleased without any help from local friends. I look forward to doing the same in Kaohsiung on my next visit as a new KMRT System opened in late 2008. I happened to be in Montreal and was honored with a free ride when it opened its French rubber tire metro system in 1966.

I was excited when Edit, my Hungarian friend, told me that Budapest has one of the oldest subway systems in the world - the Millennium Subway. The decision to have a subway was made when three cities, Buda, Obuda and Pest merged into one in 1873 in commemoration of the 1,000th anniversary of Magyarok by Emperor Franz Joseph. It seemed Budapest was then competing with its rival city Vienna. Coincidentally, cities like London, New York and Chicago were all planning underground railways, but using steam locomotives. The change from locomotives to electric vehicles came after 1900, London in 1902, and New York 1904 (Interborough Rapid Transit – 9th Ave line).

For Hungarian metro, two local firms and German Siemens & Halske AG worked together to build the line entirely from the surface using a cut and cover method. Called Franz Joseph Line, the length of line is 3.68 kilometers of which 3.22 kiloneters ran underground. The service started on May 2, 1896. Therefore this line subway is petty shallow, just about 5 meters deep. You can jump into a car in under 10 seconds if you so desire.

Today, the subway system has 3 lines totaling 32 kilometers, color coded in yellow (Millennium line), blue (opened 1976, north to south), red (opened in 1970, east to west) and one line under construction scheduled to open in 2012. Daily users total 1.3 million people.

In 2002, this Millennium line, along with the Andrassy ut running on top of the subway got the World Heritage designation. Andrassy ut is an iconic boulevard, compared with Paris’ Chanselise, linked with notable spots like Opera House, the House of Terror, Memorial Houses of Franz Liszt and Lolton Kadraly, Heroe’s and Elizabeth Squares.

There's a subway museum you can visit near the Deak Frerenc Station where you can view some of the original cars.

"It's not only enough to be Hungarian. One must also have talent"

The name Bartok struck me when I was listening to the music tape sent from my New York friend. I loved his Violin Concertos which are unique and different and wondered where he was born. He was a Hungarian, although he immigrated to the U.S.

I saw photographs of Robert Capa. His real name was Friedmann, a Hungarian. Then one day I saw Andrew Grove, President of Intel in San Diego. I read his memoir Swimming Across and found he was Grof Andras Istvan, a Hungarian. Upon returning to Japan, I had a chance to listen to Peter Frankl, a genius mathematician and a professional road juggler, a Hungarian now residing in Japan. He wrote many books in Japanese, including his autobiography Why I speak 11 languages.

Over a dozen Hungarian scientists are listed as Nobel Laureates, including Eugene Wigner, who was involved in the Manhattan Project; Rubik Erno, who established the International Rubik Foundation; George Soros, CEO of Soros Fund Management; Biro Laszlo, an inventor of ball point pens; and Neumann Janos, mathematician / physicist best known for his game theory. In 2002, Imre Kertesz joined as the first Hungarian writer to win the Nobel prize for literature. He wrote his semi-autobiographical novel Fateless dealing with the Holocaust.

According to Peter Frankl, who serves on the Hungarian Academy of Science as an adviser, research conducted on the Hungarian genes did not reveal any uniqueness compared to neighboring nationalities of Serbians, Romanians, ...,etc. Hence the teaching "not only to be Hungarian, he has to have a talent." The same applies to the Japanese as well, all the more.

I had a friend in Budapest, who studied Japanese in Kitakyushu. Her Japanese is excellent. To speak Japanese that fluently, one would have had to spend at least a couple of years in Japan. Her English is also superb, as she had studied in Australia. During my trip there, her boyfriend, who was also a friend of mine, visited Budapest from Mexico. We got together for a little reunion. What a combination between Hungarian and Mexican! They met in Kitakyushu. She was applying for a job with a Japanese manufacturer and she was told her interview went well. In a cafe, we toasted to her success.

I stayed in a Buda side hotel, by the Deli Station for 5 days because of its proximity to the Gellert and Castle Hills and the hotel where the Hungarian Toastmasters met. I moved to the Pest side hotel one day before leaving for Vienna from Keleti Station. I took a day trip by train to rustic Szentendre on the Danube Bend, and a boat ride coming back. It was a wonderful sunny afternoon to view the Chain Bridge and the Royal Palace. The waltz "Blue Danube" was written by Johann Strauss for his Hungarian friend / writer Carl Beck.