past splendor
This post is about a day at Hotel Tisza in Szolnok. I hang out with my dad, and in the evening I take a bath with thermal water.
Hotel Tisza had seen better days. In fact, it had probably seen years of grandeur. But it looked as if those times had long since passed.
The building itself was still beautiful, the attached spa prided itself on its thermal water containing calcium, magnesium, fluorine, metasilicic acid and metaboric acid, and the location on the riverside couldn’t have been any better.
what time did
But after communism had destroyed everything and the free market had picked up the pieces, the paint was now peeling, the ballroom had devolved into a breakfast buffet, and the carpets looked like historical artefacts.
I liked staying in the hotel, though. I took a hot shower with the thermal water, and I gave my hair a good wash, I had my first warm meal in Hungary (a four-cheese pizza), I washed some of my socks, and I finally got to sleep in a proper bed.
family
And I wasn’t alone. My dad had come to visit. He couldn’t stay long, but we had dinner the evening before, and today breakfast, lunch, and cake in the afternoon. Then he left, and I had the hotel to myself.
I bought a pack of wasabi nuts and a cold bottle of Pepsi Lime. Then I filled the tub with hot, yellowish thermal water and got in. I thought of the dead casinos in Ramsar in Iran. And then I thought of the thermal baths in Mineralni Bani in Bulgaria. In Iran it had been summer, in Bulgaria winter.
Now it was something in between.
I drank the Pepsi and I ate the wasabi nuts, trying to relax, hoping that the thermal bath would help with my back pain.
pictures
Hotel Tisza in Szolnok: