I spent the last three days (Friday to Sunday) in Budapest, at our company’s annual conference/off-site. (Last year’s trip went to Berlin.) We spent most of our time in various social activities, including a lot of eating, so I didn’t have time to see as much of the city as I had hoped, but here are some brief notes:

• Warm. The temperature was around 15 to 20°C during daytime. After the +5°C we had in Stockholm, it was a bit of a shock. I’d forgotten what 20°C feels like, and wished I had brought sandals.
• “Continental,” with lots of outdoor cafes and restaurants, shops spreading their wares into the streets, street performers etc, and a lot of people out and about in the evening. Of course it’s easy to get people to hang around in sidewalk cafes when the weather outside is so balmy.
• Grey and beige, since almost all houses were clad in local sandstone. Made me think of central Paris, which was similarly grey.
• The Donau (Danube) is nowhere near blue.
• Buda and Pest are strikingly different. Buda is hilly, green, residential. Pest is flat, gray, commercial.

The most interesting sight I saw was the thermal baths of Szécsény. It’s a complex of indoor and outdoor pools, heated by natural hot springs. It was interesting to see bathing as a social activity: the crowd was mostly adults hanging around, conversing, and floating. There were hardly any children around, and I imagine they would have found the baths quite boring (although there were some fountains and a jet stream.) The coolest pool had a water temperature of 18°C and the hottest was 38°C – too warm for comfort, in my opinion. But the 34°C pools were quite pleasant, and the relaxing atmosphere was quite contagious, although I have to admit to getting slightly bored and impatient after an hour or so (at which point I fetched my camera and did some wandering).

Photos coming up soon, hopefully.