Wind wind wind. Wind, so strong it stopped me in my tracks, caught unprepared my unbuttoned jacket whipped behind me, like a rug pulled out from underfoot. Budapest, next to a turn in the Danube, was behind the Iron Curtain, but the fallen status could offer no more protection in 2010 than it had offered decades before. The people’s faces in Hungary, I’m sure, fell much sooner. Their demeanors were not the hard lines of people who had fought too hard for too long, neither were they etched with unspeakable grief. They were like the buildings. Cold and unseeing. Dreary concrete constructions from the outside with very few windows but a broken gate with many locks. From the inner courtyard you could look below ornate moldings and walk on intricately tiled floors, you could see that the inner walls were painted pastels grayed with time, but you had to get inside first. Things were private here.
In Pest, there were a great many people without homes. They laid side by side in the metro stations, or the pedestrian underpasses. Cardboard and beards. They sat ironically under statues memorializing the greatness of their country or they stood ironically selling bright cheerful balloons. They made their privacy with layers. Layers of clothes, layers of personalities, some had locked themselves from their minds. Too many locks.
The bus we had taken on Friday afternoon had left us tired. Our wanderings around the city in search of a place to stay had left us hungry. We took a break inside a coffee shop that had slot machines which blinked constantly with colors. Few people spoke English. Communication with them was performed rather than spoken. There was lots of pointing. Mostly we just talked with ourselves. We walked around Buda in the morning, to the top of the hill. Laughing, taking lots of pictures we covered the main sights until our feet couldn’t hold us up. Randomly we ate at a cheap Indian restaurant. Pale Hungarian women wrapped in saris gracefully served us on cheap metal dishes. The next stop was the baths; Budapest’s location on a fault line put to good use.
The famed hot springs were housed in a mansion with more pools than rooms—every temperature and shape imaginable, some scented, some full of people, some had fountains, some marked with lanes, some outside. The courtyard housed two half spheres with hot jets of water pouring from the bottom of two different, yet equally sensual, statues. One was a goose tweaking a woman’s nipple. There were stairs on the curved part where fit Europeans lounged—their ears getting cold in the 50 degree weather. Speedos abounded. A pair of older men played chess, the plastic board on a thick cement railing. It was a sight that made you laugh internally with the wonderment of it all. Relaxing, joking, people watching it was in every sense enjoyable. It felt good to be floating free.
It felt good until a man touched my leg. I glimpsed instantly into reality before shrugging it off as an accident in a pool full of people. I went back to lounging, keeping an eye on the good-looking man whose hand had brushed my thigh. The four travelers who made up our group entered a whirlpool where we were spun around with the current, racing each other and avoiding the elderly. My leg was touched again, too my surprise the same man as before was next to me. I told my friends and we joked about it. The third time it happened, I knew it was not an accident. The man became ugly in my eyes. I moved to a different area of the pool with my friends, we sat away from other people and talked about our plans for the next day. The man with short dark hair and a small blue speedo swam near. I moved further away and he quickly swum past grabbing my butt. The joking stopped in our group as I announced that I was going to take action.
The following moments could be surmised as momentous and surreal without actually being entirely momentous or completely surreal. Standing wet in a bikini, I was too angry to be cold. Speaking English to a fully-clothed guard, pointing out the man, hearing them speak Hungarian to one another, hearing the apparently drunk man’s excuse. Me announcing loudly with more pointing (so those who weren’t within earshot or couldn’t understand the language) could understand that this man was acting inappropriately. This was not the first time I had been sexually harassed, but it was the first time I had confronted the man. The fact that I was skimpily dressed in winter while doing so, added an element of humor, of the idea of equality. I was woman, hear me roar.
It started with a pair of humping turtles. Well, actually it started about an hour before when I met a fellow West Virginian and asked her whether she liked to go the Secession gallery with me. But in hindsight, our adventure began with two ceramic reptiles getting it on, on top of a counter. The gallery was supposed to show Art Nouveau, like Klimt, but all we could see in the dim light were red walls and black leather. I figured it was some sort of trendy nightclub where the Viennese could mingle among the art. We were told to go down the corridor and a flight of stairs to get to the exhibit. We began what became the most interesting walk of my time in Europe.
The dim lighting continued with tassels separating the cloak room to the hallway. Off to the left was a small orange room with plush walls, a mirror, and a bed taking up the entire space. On the bed was a box of tissues. Strange, guess this was progressive art.
The next room we passed had two large double beds and above them was a large plasma screen playing a very explicit porno. More boxes of tissues.
It dawned on me, a creeping realism of what sort of building we had just entered. I whisper to Amanda, who was still in her church clothes that I think we just paid 5 Euros to get into a sex club. Sure enough, the handout I was given by the severe Austrian receptionist explains that we had entered Element 6 a swingers (and noncommercial) sex club. After saying this out loud, still staring at the captivating fingering that was going on above our heads, I became very conscious of the man who checked our tickets. Did he know that we had made a mistake or was he expecting us to….you know?
Amanda looked at me with large frightened eyes and said we should leave. I had the same thought, I wouldn’t want to encounter anybody, but at the same time I was very curious. Just how far done the rabbit hole should we go? I told her we should see what else there was, after all, we hadn’t gone downstairs.
We passed another bedroom with tissue boxes, this time the walls had holes where eyes and genitalia could peep through. We passed a hot tub and finally went down the stairs. Passed a sauna, a small basement-like room held an assortment of lawn furniture and plastic trees. The trees and other plastic flora enclosed mattresses on the floor covered in red velvet adorned with more tissue boxes. It was after we got over the jungle fever that we looked up to the famous frieze lining the top section of the walls. The gold paint and naked women of Klimt.
There were several other people milling about the room. Amanda and I were unsure as to whether they knew they had purchased tickets to a sex club. Whether they were here for Klimts or clits or both. A striking blonde stood in the center speaking in English. We learned that the artist who earned 4 months of exhibition time at the gallery had sold it to an adult entertainer who had turned it into a functioning sex club. An artistic expression of the most progressive sort.
With a cold gust of wind and a heavy pull on an old door, we left the empty street for a hazy coffee house. The fresh air in our lungs was instantly replaced that of smoke. Usually, I would be offended, but in the coffee house with old wooden chairs and cloth covered couches, it seemed more than appropriate. We sat at a small round table at the middle of the room, quietly staring. Posters covered an entire wall, they ranged from huge tapestry-like announcements of new museum exhibitions, to small print-outs informing the artistic audience of the next gig. The rest of the walls consisted of a bar, a full window that overlooked the street, and a more subdued wall with well-spaced framed art. This was my first coffee house in Vienna; it reminded me of a book I had read a long time ago. This was where the Radicals, rebels to Vienna’s formal and classical schools of thought, had fled to. It was here they discussed their philosophies, played chess, debated whether Hitler was good for Austria or not. The waiter came and went dressed in a tuxedo that seemed lavishly out of place, even on principal—the Radicals were against capitalism and embraced the socialist ideal of equality.
My chair in the center was conveniently facing a table that seated people who were made to be written about. The first couple was sitting next to each other drinking coffee. They were in love. Two very strong, artificial blonde Aryan men, whispering and smiling, touching each other on their shoulders, legs, necks. After they had gone another couple replaced them. This time it was older tattooed woman, wearing thick red lipstick and her partner in crime sporting a great handlebar mustache that formed a giant square arc around his mouth. He was wearing a great leather vest. The two that would look right at place straddling a Harley, were instead eating delicate pastries and mulling over a newspaper. The third and final character was, undoubtedly, the most Viennese. A hefty old man wearing a V-neck sweater and a newspaper boy cap. He sat down and ordered a snack of anchovies on buttered bread along with a coffee, his top lip hidden under the most ideal white mustache. He spent considerable time packing and lighting a wooden pipe which was clenched between his graying teeth. Upon lighting it to his satisfaction, he then strolled around the room puffing the scent of sweet tobacco like a one-man train. We left Café Hawelka long after the smell of his pipe had dissipated.
