Visegrád

Visegrád/Nagymaros [map]
40km North of Budapest

If you’re planning on visiting the Danube Bend, which you absolutely should, don’t assume that the towns are much the same. While Szentendre is all about the town and Esztergom is all about the cathedral, Visegrád draws you in to the landscape and the remnants of a faded world.

Travelling from Budapest by train takes around an hour and brings you to Nagymaros, the slightly larger one-horse town across the river. It’s pretty unassuming but has a nice blend of ease and charm, its greatest asset being the view of Visegrád. The stunning geography of the hills, piling up on each other like sofa cushions, is punctuated with Salamon’s Tower, the Citadel, a simple church and a smattering of houses hiding amongst the fabric of the trees.

The Danube here takes on the guise of a lake; its breadth looks broader still, as it curves around the hills. The Nagymaros side offers an opportunity to sit by the river on peaceful sandy beaches, without the intrusion of a road. A modest selection of restaurants and bars are also genuinely riverside. After you’re through daydreaming, a small car-ferry connects to the opposite bank.

The centre of Visegrád is essentially a handful of restaurants. However, a few hundred metres along Fő utca are the excavated and partially reconstructed ruins of the Royal Palace. It doesn’t look particularly palatial at first glance, in fact it looks distinctly farmhouse-like, so don’t expect regal grandeur. The cloistered ‘formal courtyard’, with its replica of the Hercules fountain, is the pinnacle and hints at how the palace might have appeared five hundred years ago. The subtlety is perhaps preferable to a complete reconstruction.

On top of the hill rising steeply behind the palace are the ruins of the Citadel. Continuing on foot, a path runs perpendicular to Fő utca, passing the brutally restored Salamon’s Tower. The journey to the summit is demanding. Turning one corner, I see half a dozen people negotiating the slope, moving awkwardly from side to side like extras from Dr Who. If you’re a smoker, prepare to wheeze, or alternatively take the bus.

Reaching the summit though is worth the endeavour, despite having to pay if you want to get anywhere near the stunning views. The Citadel itself is embellished with tableaux of medieval life, houses a waxwork museum and is home to some rather unpleasant smelling horses, all of which are a little superfluous (particularly the horses.) They do little to detract from the scenery though, which is simply magnificent.

V

isegrad, Vishgrad, Vishegrad, Najmaros, Nadjmaros, Nagmaros
Take a train from Nyugati palyaudvar to Nagymaros (1hr), or alternatively take a boat, if a three-and-a-half hour trip appeals to you. There's also a hydrofoil that only takes an hour, if you have money to burn.

Andy Sz.

Széchenyi Baths

Állatkerti körút, Városliget [map]
Pest, XIV, Széchenyi Fürdő (M1), 1 min

The prospect of a trip to the baths tends to conjure mixed feelings. It’s certainly quintessential Budapest and those who don’t try it will surely have a niggling regret. But most people also find it a pretty daunting experience, especially if they’re already aware of the level of customer service in the city, i.e. zero. So the trick is to match your expectations to reality and take a few precautions so that you can actually relax.

Széchenyi baths is a great option for the first-time bather. It's frequented by a lot of tourists, so you needn’t feel like you’re the only one who has no idea about what you’re doing. That’s not to say that the staff will be eager to help you but it’s comforting to know that other people aren’t being helped either. It’s also architecturally outstanding – turn of the century neo-baroque – so the chances of you leaving without appreciating something are fairly slim.

The main entrance faces the road, rather than the park (Városliget) and there are multiple ticket options, which may be a bit confusing. Take the cheapest and you’ll get your money’s worth with three outdoor pools, some pungent indoor pools of wildly varying temperature, and even the use of gym equipment, if you can find it! Should you want to step up the pampering level, the words ‘massage’ and ‘sauna’ should be understood too. For current prices, check here.

Whatever you do, don’t go expecting a pristine health-farm environment, that’s not what this is about, and some parts of the building are looking a little worse for wear. There’ll also be unidentifiable stuff in some of the pools, and you won’t know if it’s something to do with the minerals or not.

Széchenyi’s assets, though, are plentiful. Relaxing outdoors in hot spring water in such impressive surroundings is not something you can do just anywhere. On colder days especially, the steam rising from the pool creates a unique, even mystical atmosphere. There’s a time-stood-still feeling about the place, like you’re part of an ancient tradition, which of course, you are. And no matter how you’ve been mistreating your body, you’ll find some sanctuary here. If you really want to go the whole hog, take a chess set with you and enjoy being tutted at by the locals for making idiotic moves.

General advice:

1) Take a towel, a swimming costume, and maybe some flip-flops. Although you can hire the former, it’s easier and cheaper if you don’t.

2) If you're going to worry about the security of your valuables, leave them at home; the whole point of the baths is to relax. Just take enough money to see you through: 10,000Ft will cover even the most indulgent bather.

3) The locker situation has really improved recently - find an open one and put the swipe card into the slot on the back of the door. In addition to the standard lockers, there are some pretty insecure ‘security’ lockers, which the baths don't take reponsibility for anyway, (and theft is not unheard of.)

4) Put any ticket-like things that you’re given at the entrance in the same pocket. You get a (small) partial refund if you stay for less than three hours, but the staff can be a bit officious when it comes to trying to claim it.

5) Explore. Don't worry about walking the wrong way - just take a chance or there's a good chance you'll miss half of what's on offer. About a dozen pools, steam room and sauna are all included in the standard ticket.

6) If you want to use the swimming pool, take a swimming cap, since they’re obligatory for anyone with hair.

Széchenyi baths has its own metro stop on the yellow line, M1, “Széchenyi Fürdő.” The huge yellow building with several spires houses the baths.
Szechenyi, Szécheni, Szecheni, Séchenyi, Sechenyi, Secheni, furdo, lido
Andy Sz.

House of Terror

Andrássy út 60 [map]
Pest Centre, VI, Oktogon (M1, T4/6), 2 min

Recent Hungarian history doesn’t get a great deal of press, so a museum that really examines its brutal, fractured past has the potential to be of enormous value. The House of Terror, though, sounds more like a fairground ride. I wonder whether that’s just a translational blip or whether there’s some serious wrong-headed thinking afoot...

From the word go, imagery does most of the talking. In the entrance hall, two symbolic gravestones are dedicated to those who suffered at the hands of the Arrowcross (Hungarian fascists) and the AVH (Soviet secret police), both of whom used 60, Andrássy út as their headquarters. A little further in, a tank sits in a pool of water, surrounded by victims' faces. Then, in the first room of the exhibition, photographs of a forlorn Budapest flash before your eyes, as the city finds itself caught in the cross-fire of World War II. A specially composed soundtrack confirms that we're in Spielberg territory and therefore may not be getting the most balanced reading of history here.

Despite this, for the uninitiated there's a lot to glean about Hungary's past: the evaporation of much of her territory; the sense that history was under someone else's control; the replacement of one regime with another and with it the requirement to be a fascist one minute and a communist the next. Many of the issues facing modern Hungary can be traced back to these events.

Substance however comes a definite second to style. It’s no coincidence that Orwell’s 1984 springs to mind: there are flatscreen TVs everywhere, but only two carry English subtitles. As the museum unfolds along its predetermined route, the images just keep piling up, while the information never quite materialises. Certainly there are A4 pieces of paper that you can read along the way but they rarely reference the exhibits.

Design continues to outstrip appropriateness. The deliberately sluggish three-minute journey down to the basement, accompanied by the description of a hanging is presumably supposed to be touching. In reality it’s in pretty bad taste and, in a lift crammed with people, is close on ridiculous. Finally we arrive at the prison cells in the basement, which should make me feel something, since the brutality really happened here. But it's too late. Perhaps if I hadn’t known that they were reconstructed, perhaps if the rest of the museum had been a little more balanced, a little less slick...

The House of Terror has often been accused of being a politically motivated project, an attempt to discredit the Socialist party, having been commissioned by the old Fidesz government. Of course, others say that the Socialists would rather pretend that none of it ever happened. Where the truth lies is hard to say, but certainly, a wall of photos of victims of the AVH, followed by a wall of Communist Party members does seem a lot like finger-pointing and, as with the rest of the museum, doesn't do much for impartiality.

Walk up Andrássy út from Oktogon and the House of Terror is on the left after two blocks: a normal looking building painted entirely in pale blue and framed with the word TERROR.
Terrorhaza, Terror Háza, Terrorháza, Terrorhouse
Andy Sz.