Europe > Hungary > Budapest > Budapest > Articles > Budapest

Erzebet didn't ask whether I wanted my buttocks included: they often do. The curious standoff between intimacy and anonymity that characterises such encounters becomes most intense just below the belt-line, at which point the layer-on-of-hands might say something like: "Would you like the buttocks included in the massage?" (The "the" is typical.)

But Erzebet didn't. I suspect they don't in Hungary or, at least, not in the peremptory capital, Budapest They certainly don't ask at the Szechenyi Turkish baths (Allatkert korut 11; 321 0310; 6am to 5-7pm; massage with baths access is Ft2, 400), because my companions, male and female, young and old - like the masseurs and masseuses - said they had been unceremoniously administered to, too.

I think the unfussy massage was of a piece with a distinctive Hungarian manner, which manifested itself in several contexts on our trip. To Anglo-Saxons, expecting a constant downpour of pleases and thank-yous, it might seem a brusque way of getting along, but, in the end, I found its otherness interesting.

We had queued, in our white robes, before the row of massage cubicles, waiting for our numbers to be read out. The scene had a tinge of the preliminary to a medical examination about it, but Erzebet, when she beckoned me, had a reassuring smile. She carried on a half-shouted conversation over the tops of the cubicles with her colleagues as she worked on me: first inscribing deep spirals in the muscles of my feet with her hard, strong thumbs, then striating my calves and hamstrings, chopping my back and only finally palpating those buttocks.

She did inflict some pain, as if a counter was needed to the pleasurable feeling of weakness, the internal gooeyness that was mine as I tottered from her slab to the baths. You could easily pass half a day slipping in and out of these mineral-spring pools, their temperatures ranging from reddeningly hot, the water barely cooled after spurting from the earth, to a shrinking, Martini cold. Some are inside, in tiled chambers filled with a soft, green, grotto-like light, and some are laid out in pleasing geometrical patterns under the open sky. The mineral content and mild radioactivity of the waters make this desultory dipping not only supremely relaxing but, supposedly, good for you, too.

The Széchenyi baths are among the largest, and most thoroughly refurbished, of five such relics of the 16th and 17th century Ottoman conquest of Hungary. I am not suggesting Hungarians like it, but domination does seem to be the overriding theme in the history of their country. The Turks were eventually evicted by the Habsburgs, who went on to rule Hungary, with the odd spot of co-optation, for the next 250 years.

One of the greatest remaining remnants from this period is the state opera house (Andrassy ut 22; 353 0170; tickets are Ft250-Ft20,000) built when Budapest was at the centre of the Austro-Hungarian empire in its ascendancy. The young woman who was our guide around this late 19th century architectural jewel was striking equally for her reserves of enthusiasm - we must have been her umpteenth party for the day - and the pastel-purple female safari suit she was wearing, which suggested communist manufacture had not entirely demised along with the system.

She also gave us another example of that Hungarian abruptness, surely as distinctive as the aptly named Unicum, the medicinal national liqueur. We were ascending the wide staircase to the formerly royal - now prime ministerial - box when one of our party stopped to photograph a recessed marble bust. We stooped in sympathy (I can't remember who was depicted. Liszt, perhaps? Or Bartok? Both great, Hungarian composers) when our wide-lapelled guide suddenly barked at the snap-happy member of our party: "Don't take photos! It is forbidden." The target started, stumbled and then assembled an affronted look at this curlicue-less command. But the guide had already resumed her patter, having, as I believe she saw it, simply conveyed a pertinent piece of information.

We finished our tour of the opera house at the smoking corridor, now defunct but whose inter-act tobacco fug would, legendarily, become so thick as to provide cover for lovers' assignations. A fading air of fin-de-siècle lassitude, redolent throughout the interior, was particularly strong in this oblong, wood-panelled space, with its shell-shaped, inlaid brass ashtrays, gleamingly empty now, and mirrors at each short end, creating an infinite extension. There came into my mind photographs of the similarly shaped and similarly elaborate enclosed promenades of the Titanic, taken in the ship's moments of glory before it sailed into disaster.

Hungary, too, was headed for calamity. Early in the 20th century it would be defeated in the First World War and then lose two-thirds of its territory in reparations. Within a couple of decades, it would be ruled by foreign-backed fascists, followed in short order by Soviet-installed communists. It is this dual authoritarian period to which the House of Terror museum (Andrassy ut 60; 374 2600; Tue-Sun 10-6; Ft3,000) is dedicated. At least, that is supposed to be its twin, non-partisan focus, but you can see why the museum caused such controversy when opened, by the then rightwing government, in 2002. For the regime of the home-grown fascist Arrow Cross party, faithful in politics and brutality to the German Nazis, receives the most cursory attention - a room or so of displays - while that of the communists is subject to triumphal expansive scrutiny: small children could wander into the dioramas and not emerge for years.

The museum - spookily housed in the former headquarters of both the Arrow Cross and the communists' security apparatus - won a special commendation in this year's European Museum Forum awards. Its displays are the most glitzy and technologically lavish of any museum's I have seen, yet they seem to have been inspired directly by Hollywood cliche: sinister spotlighting is everywhere; the sound of a tap dripping plays endlessly in an empty cell; a soviet tank rears above you at the entrance, mounted on a great, shiny, black plinth.

No expense appears to have been spared, which illustrates an unintended irony of capitalist celebration in a Hungary in which the cost of books has increased 20-fold since the downfall of communism and most ordinary Hungarians can no longer afford to visit the baths in which I had lolled. As for communist triumphalism, that is now to be found in one of the far-flung suburbs of Budapest. The socialist-art statues that used to be displayed throughout the city and were joyously pulled from their pedestals after 1989 have not been sold for scrap but gathered together in the scruffy enclosure of the Statue Park (Balatoni ut; 227 7446; 10am - sunset; Ft600).

A visit to the park is memorable not only for the bitter-sweet atmosphere of failed utopianism emanated by these monuments, like the last surviving beasts of a redundant species corralled in a zoo. Notwithstanding the occasional disproportionate body part and a rather overdone theme of skyward-punching fists, the statuary's pervasive emphasis on movement - running, thrusting, wielding - also makes a welcome contrast from the horse-mounted chaps with hats typical in English civic monuments. Some of the works, moreover, such as Imre Varga's fantastical Bela Kun memorial of charging soldiers, are of real aesthetic interest. On leaving, you might wish to take home with you some of the hybrid communist-capitalist kitsch on sale at the entrance: tins containing "the last breath of socialism" and "tame Molotov cocktails".

With Hungary lately subsumed within the EU, some people have expressed a hope that Europe will have a diluting influence on another maligned national institution: its cuisine. The latter is, it is true, characteristically heavy, as well as ornate: a bit like wrought iron. The Arany Barany restaurant (Harmincad ut 4; 267 0213), where we ate, served up guinea-fowl soup, followed by pike-perch rolled in grape leaves, roast turkey and dumplings with an apricot sauce and, finally, dried fruits in brandy with vanilla cream.

I can enjoy such food, but I would not want to sit down to a reheated medieval banquet every night. Service, too, can be time-bound: the waitress at Aran Barany is probably still bringing our wine. But if you find Hungarians' interpersonal style rubbing you up the wrong way, you might always do as I did: turn the other cheek.

This article originally appeared on Guardian Unlimited

Articles

• More from Simon Busch