It's a chilly 10 Celsius and the rain is settling in deep in the heart of Transdanubia in western Hungary. Mingling in the steam rising off Lake Heviz is a portly gentleman wearing a bathing cap with the ear flaps flipped up and a red rubber ring tucked under his arms, oblivious to the weather.
He reads a magazine covered with plastic and clipped to a floating lectern in front of him, while elsewhere, in this weird and steamy cauldron to the west of Lake Balaton, a group of rubber-ringed onlookers watch two men plot their strategies on a floating chessboard.
The Earth's crust is thin in the Carpathian basin where Hungary is situated, allowing thermal springs to easily find their way to the surface. A few of them joined forces to create Lake Heviz, spewing forth 60 million litres of warm, mineral-laden water every day. At almost five hectares, it is the largest thermal lake in Europe and second-largest in the world.
Still, from a Western perspective, it wasn't much of a day for a swim on a cool November day last fall. But that misses the point entirely. Lake Heviz is but one of many public baths across the country and one comes here to take the waters (recommended for rheumatic, locomotor and inflammatory ailments), as Hungarians, Turks, Romans and Celts have done here for centuries. And that's where the inner tubes come in: to maximize the therapeutic effect, by minimizing the effort required to stay afloat.
Other than lily pads that line the shore, few other living forms are sustainable in Lake Heviz due to the slightly radioactive mud lake bed. The lake is renewed daily by hot and cold mineral springs emanating from a cave 37 metres below. The resulting mix is a very civilized surface temperature of about 29 C.
Consequently, miserable weather is almost irrelevant at Lake Heviz, and becomes entirely so inside the large pavilion built over the middle of the lake where the air temperature is controlled, the water is just a few degrees warmer, and guests drift and linger.
The spa and surrounding park land was developed by Count Gyorgy Festetics from nearby Keszthely about 200 years ago for the amusement of his guests and friends who found the waters to have curative properties. After the Second World War, the entire area around Lake Balaton became an experiment in social tourism under Communism, when many private villas were expropriated and morphed into holiday camps for the workers. Today, in the summer months, the region is the most-visited area in the country after Budapest, three hours away by train.
But there are plenty of diversions for bathers in Hungary's capital city too. The Danube River divides modern Budapest into the former towns of Buda on the west and Pest on the east. Slightly north on the Buda side is the site of the original Roman settlement of Aquincum, which meant plentiful waters, referring to the more than 123 thermal springs that surface in the surrounding area. The Romans exploited the resource for under-floor heating. They also established at least 11 known baths.
The Romans regarded regular bathing as fundamental to a person's mental well-being, a sentiment that continues in Budapest today, where locals are spotted toting towels and bathing suits on their way to public pools.
The best known and most spectacular bathhouse in Budapest is attached to the Gellert Hotel, worth a visit just to view its art nouveau interior with spiralling columns, water-spouting lions and a steel and glass dome overhead.
Outdoors is a sunbathing area and the wave pool, a popular novelty in this landlocked country, as well as a thermal pool where jets of warm, bubbly mineral water massage you into a mass of jellied submission. Also available are steam baths and the requisite treatments and massage therapies.
