Travel
IN PRAISE OF BUDAPEST
SEPTEMBER brought me to the end of a long quest. In seeking for the perfect holiday, one is always forced to the decision between land and water. If you want water, you can have the teeming vulgarity of the British seaside, or you can cruise around on a little island of suburban gaiety, or you can risk the quite unpredictable expense and the peculiar madness of the south of France. If you want land, you can have it, but you will come home disappointed and only half refreshed. But there is one place where the delights of land and water are united in the most delectable combination this side of paradise ; and that is at Budapest.
In every variety of bad English, the guide-books sing the merits of Budapest, medicinal, historical, architectural. For my own part, I was not concerned with seeing sights : I wanted to wash off a little of the red, white and blue that seemed to have pervaded London all the summer. Budapest proved ideal. It .distils an atmosphere more exquisitely un-British, more delicate and wild, than the most romantic- imagination could foreshadow. There were plenty of English about, to be sure. There will be still more next year : for the town is being rapidly and brilliantly improved. Soon it will become like Kitzbuhel a British protectorate, as its marvels become more widely known. This article is written to advise anyone who would be advised that next year is the time to go to Budapest ; for it has an all too glorious future.
To begin with, the Hungarians have started building con- crete, dustless roads. The road from Vienna is perfect : the road from Graz will soon be equally good. It is no trouble in the world to get there. You meet scarcely anything but a few flocks of geese before you are plunged into a great capital, all trams and taxis, set in the midst of the humblest agricultural landscape. But at the heart of it is a quiet rock, the Citadel, from which a great cross, lit with neon lights, guards the city by night. From the summit of the Citadel you can look down at night on the wide river, its bridges forming tiaras of light, and the miles of mysterious streets spreading out beyond into the plains.
By day, the peculiar delight of Budapest is in its baths : and the greatest of its baths—surely the greatest bath since Caracalla's—is the Palatinus bath, which was opened this year. The Palatinus is divided into four baths, scattered over an immense lawn, with restaurants, fountains and shops about the place. It exactly fulfils a mental image of the Elysian Fields, where there is room for thousands of people to lie about or run or wallow in perfect comfort. In using the baths, there is a technique, for they vary in temperature. The first, which is for the heroic, is an enclosure of rafts upon the Danube itself, whose waters are fast, yellow, and very cold. The second is a small bath which shelves steeply in depth. Here the attraction lies in artificial waves, which are turned on every alternate quarter of an hour. They are quite vigorous waves, which will knock you down along the sides, though you can float on them in the middle. The third bath is immense—I should say two acres in extent. It is cold at the south end, and gets warmer towards the north : and hundreds of people can swim in it without colliding. Lastly there is the hot bath, which is about as hot and as deep as an ordinary domestic bath. Here one sits, in rows of little sloping partitions divided by submarine arm-rests : some people read books and papers, others merely bask all morning. The water in this bath has a pleasant smell of sulphur, which makes it a sovereign remedy against all stiff- nesses and fatigues. After a day's bathing, you come out still smelling faintly of sulphur, and feeling as though you owned the world.
These fabulous baths are set upon St. Margaret's Island, which is a heaven in itself, admission threepence. There is a hotel upon the island, restaurants cheap and dear, a cabaret, a golf-course, clubs for rowing, tennis, and shooting. By a stroke of genius all the fences and railings on the island have lately been abolished, so that all these units blend into a huge park, set with great trees and studded with flower-beds where pheasants walk. In the hills outside Budapest there are other restaurants set high above the city, from which the view is magical. There are expensive places where you can dance, and where elaborate shows are given. There is an excellent restaurant in the city park. There is a long terrace of open restaurants that form a closed promenade along the Danube. Hungarian food, as it is cooked in Budapest, easily surpasses the best Viennese food ; and there are about a dozen first-class restaurants. But the real pursuit of the evening is the Gipsy music, which nowhere else means anything. It is a music that really purges and not merely titivates. Melancholy beyond description, it makes self-pity seem impossible. Furiously gay, it makes the civilised night-life seem ridiculnus. Like star-gazing, it puts you where you cannot see yourself. It has made a waiter forget to bring my food, and me forget to curse the waiter.
As for the Hungarians, they are enchanting. Except for the chambermaids—stout peasant-women in squeaky boots— they all live up to their reputation for charm and manners. They are so courteous that the motorists do not even sound their horns. They are desperately poor, yet they seem always not merely happy but lavish. They labour under bitter grievances, yet they are entirely unmilitaristic and impervious to Fascism. It is obvious on every side that they know how to govern themselves : and for the redress of their wrongs they rely upon the workings of justice. They have set up a statue in memory of Lord Rothermere's lost interest in their cause ; and they fasten upon even the humblest journalist as a possible ally.
This is my unsolicited and unpaid testimonial to the fascina- tion of Budapest. There is much more that could be said, but the thing must stand. Let it suffice to say that Budapest is as amusing as Cannes by day, and as amusing as Paris by night. I have always thought that a man can make no more abject confession of dullness than by spending all his holidays in the same place. " Dear old So-and-so," schoolmasters say ; " why, I have joined him at Keswick every August for thirty years." But years hence, I shall be going every summer to Budapest : for if a more delightful place there were, it would be impossible to bring oneself away.
CHRISTOPHER HOBHOUSE.
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