EXPERIENCE

On the road, bath-hopping in Hungary.

MANY VISITORS TO HUNGARY never leave Budapest. After all, it’s one of the most glorious cities in Europe, ablaze with Gothic castles and Belle Époque cafés. Plus, there are the famous bathhouses, fed by more than a hundred thermal springs beneath the city, so you can turn pretty much every day into a spa day. But those same healing mineral waters bubble up all over the country, and many Hungarian hotels offer wellness programmes. In fact, when Hungarians go on vacation, they often choose to wellnessezni— a verb that means to take a weekend vacation to visit a spa hotel and generally focus on health. Following their lead, I set out on a five-day road trip across northern Hungary, beginning and ending in Budapest, to experience this distinctly Magyar brand of R&R.

BUDAPEST

Although I felt a cold coming on as my flight landed on a wintry Sunday night, I was comforted by the thought that soothing waters awaited me. I began at the two-year-old RitzCarlton, where the blue-and-white decor evokes thermal waters. The spa’s signature treatment, Serenity on the Danube, is designed to help guests recover from their flights. Later, I visited Rudas Thermal Bath, a 16th-century hammam

built during the city’s Ottoman occupation. While lounging in the surprisingly hot octagonal pool, beneath an ancient domed roof that let in thin shafts of sunlight, I occasionally drank pure, unfiltered spring water directly from the source. The only thing that rivals its healing powers is a bowl of matzo ball soup at Rosenstein, one of the city’s best Jewish restaurants, which is where I went next. Wreathed in fragrant steam, I made a mental note to follow the Rosenstein method of adding freshly grated ginger and goose fat to the matzo balls the next time I made them at home.

BUDAPEST TO HOLLÓKŐ

Located about two hours northeast of Budapest, Hollókő—which means ‘raven stone’— is an old village stuck in time. A UNESCO World Heritage site, it is partly a working town and partly an open-air museum that preserves the folkcraft and traditions of the Palóc people (such as spritzing maidens with water on Easter). It’s set within a hilly landscape often called the Tuscany of Hungary, where the winding roads are perfect for a driving adventure—and an afternoon of relaxing in saunas and hot tubs.

I quickly realised that Hungarians have an idiosyncratic concept of wellness. For one thing, their purifying getaways involve drinking copious amounts of pálinka, a traditional fruit brandy. At the Castellum Hotel Hollókő (renowned for its extensive spa), I found a complimentary bottle on my bedside table. When I met Péter Kelecsényi, the director of the heritage site, he asked if I’d tried any yet. “No? See, that’s the problem. It will cure your cold right away.” I declined to follow

Kelecsényi’s prescription, but I did find that this peculiar hamlet had its own uplifting effect.

HOLLÓKŐ TO LILLAFÜRED

Driving deeper into northern Hungary, I felt a sense of discovery, like Béla Bartók collecting folk songs there a century ago—an effect only enhanced by an amazing AM radio station playing cimbalom music, a traditional style using a dulcimer-like instrument. I drove through the fields and forests within the Kelet-Cserhát protected area, which were full of game and wild mushrooms, occasionally coming upon small towns where peasant homes stood beside farmland and orchards, their slender chimneys sending plumes of smoke into the hay-scented air.

Hungary’s most famous wine, a blended red known as Bull’s Blood of Eger, is made in this part of the country, which has become renowned for its viticulture. In Heves county, near the city of Eger, the terraced hills are speckled with vineyards, like St. Andrea, where I took a cellar tour and drank several of the distinctive reds made from dark-skinned regional grapes. The region is also home to a natural marvel known as Salt Hill, in the village of Egerszalók, an unruly castle of travertine rising from a mineral hot spring that has been developed into a spa resort called the Saliris. I spent a blissful afternoon soaking in the thermal waters and enjoying the view of the crystal-encrusted hill.

At lunchtime, I went to the spa’s cafeteria for kohlrabi soup, which reminded me of my Hungarian grandmother’s. Afterward, I drove east to the town of Lillafüred, which is dominated by the Cinderella Castle- esque Hunguest Hotel Palota. In the hanging gardens next door, pearls of light sparkled through the deepening dusk.

LILLAFÜRED TO SOMLÓ

A sculpture in those same hanging gardens memorialises the Hungarian poet Attila József, who composed some of his finest verses after visiting the region’s caves—which, like the waters, are said to have medicinal properties. The Szent István cave, near the hotel, boasts a near 100 per cent humidity level, which is beneficial for those with respiratory conditions. Since my cold was lingering, I wanted to try the cave’s curative ‘black hall,’ named for its lack of light. But because it has been specially designed for long-term patient care, I was unable to enter without a doctor’s note. Instead, I took one of the hourly guided tours of the cave’s stalagmites, stalactites, and a massive flowstone formation known as the frozen waterfall.

That afternoon, I made my way to Lake Balaton, southwest of Budapest. In the summer, Balaton—the largest freshwater lake in Central Europe—is a busy beach destination, but in early winter I found it pleasantly mellow. My first stop was Hévíz, a spa town a few miles from Balaton’s western end that is built around Lake Hévíz, the world’s largest thermal lake. In a pool inside Lake Bath, a spa structure that sits on stilts in the centre of the lake, Jacuzzi-style jets pummeled me with hot water drawn from deep within the earth.

Another must-visit in the area is the Herend Porcelain Museum and Manufactory, where you can pick up beautiful teacups and tableware of the sort beloved by 19th-century European nobility. I had a classic paprika-laced Hungarian lunch—served on Herend porcelain, of

course—at Paletta Étterem, the museum’s cafeteria. Be sure to try the goulash.

Another wine region lies a half-hour to the west, on the slopes of the dormant volcano of Somló. The place to stay is Kreinbacher Birtok, a hypermodern hotel on the estate of the Kreinbacher Winery. Farther up the mountain is the Somló Wine Shop, whose owner, Éva Cartwright, invited me to a lamb roast at the shop that evening with a group of her favourite local winemakers. I sampled white wines made from obscure grape varieties like Juhfark and Olaszrizling, which have the same explosive minerality that bubbles up in the country’s hot springs. Though little known outside Hungary, they are some of the finest wines in the world.

SOMLÓ TO BUDAPEST

The long way back to Budapest took me through another spa town, Sárvár, in the northwestern corner of Hungary. Its name, which translates to ‘mud castle,’ comes from the salubrious silt of the Rába River, on whose banks the town lies. Those looking for an upscale way to experience the medicinal waters can book at one of Sárvár’s many spa resorts, such as the fivestar Spirit Hotel. But because I was just passing through, I paid the small entrance fee to visit the Spa & Wellness Center of Sárvár, the town’s public springs. Algae in these soothing waters gives them a dark-green hue that matches the surrounding forests. I also spent a half hour sitting in the spa’s Salt Cave, a magical igloo built from large cubes of salt, with surreal pink salt stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Every breath felt like licking the rim of a margarita.

At lunch, I noticed that in addition to drinking pálinka, Hungarians on wellnessezni trips enjoy eating massive platters of meaty regional food. It’s common at the spa to see someone in a bathrobe bent over a giant portion of cabbage layered with ground pork and butter or a hubcap-sized Wiener schnitzel, washing the meal down with a frosty stein of beer. Back in Budapest, I spent my final night at one of the grandest hotels in the world: the Four Seasons Hotel Gresham Palace, an Art Nouveau grand dame with intricate mosaics and ironwork, and original stained glass that survived the wars. The best rooms look out over the Danube and the 1849 Széchenyi Chain Bridge toward Buda Castle. I had one of my favourite meals of the week just around the corner at Café Kör, where the roasted goose leg was paired spectacularly with wines from the regions I’d been exploring. The next morning, I schvitzed in the hot springs at the resplendently neoBaroque Széchenyi Baths, the largest natural hot-spring bathhouse in Europe. My favourite sight was the raisin-skinned gentlemen in bathing caps playing chess on boards built right into the steaming waters of the outdoor pools— further proof, as if I needed any more, that in Hungary the baths truly are a way of life.

The central octagonal pool at Rudas Thermal Bath, a medieval Turkish bathhouse in Budapest.

Cholent, a slow-cooked beef stew, at Rosenstein, one of Budapest’s most beloved Jewish restaurants.

From left: A boy in traditional costume in Hollókő, an ethnographic village in northern Hungary that is a UNESCO World HeritageSite; the Salt Hill of Egerszalók, a travertine formation in northern Hungary.

From top: The outdoor thermal pool at Budapest’s neo-Baroque Széchenyi Baths; a vineyard in Hungary’s Somló wine region, west of Budapest.