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Thursday, August 22nd – Budapest, Day 3
I eat breakfast with Jan and Eero again. Jan invites me to check out some architectural treasures on the outskirts of the core, but I haven’t yet seen the main attractions in the core of Pest so I opt to go it alone.
I steal a free ride on the bus over the Lion Bridge to walk around the Parliament Buildings and to explore St Stephen’s Basilica. There are great views from the basilica of the area around it. I walk to the main post office to see if there are any letters waiting for me at the 
poste restante counter. There is a letter from my mother and one from Mike Silk, who has left the lowlands and has just arrived in Koblenz. He has climbed the steep hill up to the youth hostel in the castle on the east bank. “So that is what 18% grade feels like!” he writes. He is heading east to Berlin, Prague and Budapest. He hopes that we can meet again further along. I will write to him in Berlin to say I will be in Istanbul if he wants to meet me there or to write to me.
I return to the hostel for lunch, and then quickly grab my bathing suit and head to the Lion Bridge to meet Daniel. He’s there looking terribly bored and perhaps a little anxious. When he sees me he looks relieved. I am greeted with his warm hug.
We walk together chatting as he leads me to the Kiraly Baths. They look small and grungy from the outside,
nothing like the other larger, more commercial-looking pools designed to accommodates large numbers of tourists families. Kiraly, with its moldy, aged exterior and its men-only clientele, is probably the most authentic of the Roman baths left, though no doubt the average tourist would find it, and the gay men in it, to be rather disgusting.
Daniel gives me a tour after we check our clothes into our lockers. We walk around with only our bathing suits and towels. You would not find gay men in other gay baths, but Daniel warned me it would be different. The upstairs is a mezzanine, with balcony looking down on the reception area. Around the balcony are a series of roomettes, which in another gay sauna would be rented for a higher price than a locker. Here, though, the roomettes are used whenever two or more guys want to have sex and the door is left open when they leave for the next users.
We go downstairs to an adjoining room where the pool is. There are a couple dozen men relaxing in the pool, which is large enough that this isn’t causing any crowding. Daniel and I move around the pool and chat with others. I seem to create an immediate interest with a couple young men bathing there when they realize I speak English. They ask where I am from and where I heard about this bath house. They seem to be satisfied knowing that I learned of it from the Spartacus Guide, which reassured them I must be gay. They are not much interested in me after that.
Daniel takes me upstairs after a half hour soak in the pool. We pick a room and make love there for the rest of the afternoon. His slender, muscular body is as hard and smooth as and a marble statue. The little hair he has is on his legs and the slender trail that leads south from his navel to his pubes. It feels soft and vulnerable.
He projects to outward impression of a young man, stronger, wiser and more self-assured than a man his age (25) should be, and he probably is in much of his life, but he has been through many stressful times and living in the underbelly of the street frequently since fleeing Romania as a refugee two years ago. He seems to like me a lot. He snuggles comfortably against me. A significant part of him that needs shelter and rest and some strong arms to keep him safe. The warrior in him also wants to find a lover he can defend and nurture. A friend I know in Vancouver would say he has “wolf” energy – fiercely independent and wanting to mate once for life. We share this in common but even our most romantic sides can see how ridiculously star-crossed a relationship between us would be in our respective situations in life. This afternoon’s sexcapades are the finest gifts we can give each other at this time.
He walks me slowly back to the hostel and becomes awkward when we are saying goodbye. “I wish I could stay,” I try to comfort him. “No,” he says softly, shaking his head gently, “I wish I could go with you.” Now, I feel a lump in my throat and look away so that my eyes won’t start to water. My discomfort amplifies his and he says he has to go. “Can we meet at the club tonight?” “I can’t tonight,” he tosses back. “Tomorrow night?” I call to him as he turns away. “Sure,” he says, turning around and walking backwards away from me, smiling.
Back at the hostel for dinner, I get into a conversation with Jan and Eero about their lives in St Louis, their search for their Finnish roots, cycle touring and architecture. That takes most of the evening, and takes my mind off Daniel. Jan also tells me about the architectural sites he has been visiting around town and shows me some pictures he has taken. A rain shower has just started outside. I am not going out tonight.
PHOTO 1: the Lion Bridge
PHOTO 2: St Stephen's Cathedral
PHOTO 3: Pest from St Stephen's
PHOTO 4: the Parliament Buildings
PHOTO 5: Museum of Applied Arts
PHOTO 6: Buda, as seen from the Pest side of the Danube
PHOTO 7: waiting for Daniel at the Lion Bridge
PHOTO 8: the Kiraly Baths
PHOTO 9: entrance to baths
PHOTO 10: inside the Kiraly Baths
PHOTO 11: the Lion Bridge at sunset
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