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Typical scene on the promenade between the hotels and the Erzsébet bridge, on a sunny late afternoon. A well-dressed, bit older man lights up a cigarette. A young guy comes to him, asks for a cigarette and starts a conversation. The game is clear and not about smoking. Who is the young guy? A runaway kid? Somebody from the penitentiary, or an orphan who never knew his parents and was not tough enough to become a badass? Someone just making a fast ten-thousand to sup- port his coke or whatever habit? Someone from a distant village, who came to work in the city and somehow ended up as a male prostitute?

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The „climbies”, the monkey bars were all manufactured by the Central Monkey Bar Manufacturing Cooperative (CMBMC). Some of them had political meaning: the sphere symbolised the globe and the rocket trained the future generation of kosmonauts. There was also the house, the cat, the wave and the pipeline and that was the selection. Thick oil paint covered them in either peace blue, soviet red, sick piss yellow or green.

They were made of metal so your hands would freeze to them in the winter and they would burn your ass in the summer. The blocks of concrete surrounding them made climbing an extreme sport. Most of the kids suffered severe injuries and boasted about them like veterans boast about their scars. Today the good old mászokas are replaced by safe-to-use, euro-conform wooden or plastic things.

Some of the old ones are still to be seen around, sunken, paint peeled off.

Visiting one of the baths (spas) is surely a must to do.

For detailed info, descriptions, news visit: budapest-bath.com

• Gellért Spa and hotel
• Address: Budapest XI., Szent Gellért tér 1.
• Tel: (+36 1) 466 61 66
• Open:
  Mon-Fri: 6.00-19.00
  Sat-Sun: 6.00-17.00
• Price:
  with locker 2800 HUF
  with cabin 3100 HUF
  Free if you stay in the Gellert Hotel

• Széchenyi Spa (Bath)
• Address: Budapest XIV., Állatkerti út 11.

• Rudas Spa (Bath)
• Address: Budapest I., Döbrentei tér 9.

• Rácfürdő (Rác Spa/Bath)
• Address: Budapest I., Hadnagy u. 8-10.
• under renovatio, opens in 2009 (allegedly…)

• Király Spa (Bath)
• Address: Budapest II., Fő u. 82-86.

• Lukács Spa (Bath)
• Address: Budapest II., Frankel Leó u. 25-29.

You can observe the contrasts of this square from the upstairs terrace of the bar on Moszkva Tér. The square lies at the intersection of many of the roads that descend from the surrounding hills - home to the country’s richest. And this is where the city’s last slave market (”official” term: illegal work force market) is held every morning. People from the Eastern part of the country and Transylvania are hired by foremen who shout loudly into mobile phones, selling these guys to building sites.

One week’s earnings of the workers could buy one pair of trainers that the übertrendy youngsters in the bar wear. Fate is a bitch sometimes. The trendiest kids have to pass the poorest workers everyday. There is little interaction, both groups dislike the other and are absolutely aware that they have little in common.