White Bluffs spokesman. [volume] (White Bluffs, Wash.) 1907-1938, 1932-12-08

1apel IN Budapest.
loading platforms are concealed from
the riverside promenade by overhang-
ing sheds with entrances beneath the
sidewalks.
In spite Of the enormous volume of
shipping in Budapest, shrunken now
by tariff walls, there are no piles of
crates or boxes, coils or tarry rope or
other maritime paraphernalia along
| the water front.
The quays are lined with long
barges, their curved, carved prows,
suggesting the galleys that once piled
the river. Families live aboard, as
do our canal-boat jewellers. Women
cook dinner in the lofty pilots shelter
and tend the tiny flower gardens amid
ships, while stalwart men, stripped to
the waist, their bodies browner than
the wheat they handle, unload cargoes
that are whisked away by waiting
trucks.
Tariffs rise and fall, but Budapest
remains focal port of the great
stream that carries the commerce of
seven European countries.
Baths Of St. GeIIert Hotel.
On the Buda side curiosity is likely
to lead the stranger to that amazing
institution, the municipal st. Gellert
hotel.
This new ''public building" typifies
ancient Buda's very active contribu-
ton to modern Budapest, for beneath
it spring pours forth nearly half a
million gallons of water a day, which
water gushes from the underlying
rocks at temperature of ia degrees
Fahrenheit. Nearly half the interior
| is devoted to baths; staff physicians
prescribe bath in tepid glass room,
or warm glass room or parboiling
in superheated glass room. Mas
seurs take you in merciless hand
thereafter.
OF course, it is barely possible you
may be in perfect health. Possible,
but you have to prove it in city
where medicinal baths constitute a
major industry. If the st. Gellert
staff grudgingly comedies the point,
there still awaits you an enormous
outdoor swimming pool. 1t is thanked
on three sides by rock-garden ter
races; the fourth is half an acre or
so Of tea tables. Every Is minutes
whistle gives the signal for artificial
waves. A gypsy band plays for the
bathers in the hotel surf
All Budapest swims, and the st. Gel
lert pool is a favorite luncheon and
tea-time rendezvous for the Buda bust
ness man, as we'll as fashion parade
for chic feminine bathing suits. Should
there be an important telephone call
during his swimming siesta, the bath
er is PACED by a portable blackboard
with his name chalked thereon, borne
silently around the edge Of the pool
by "bell hop"
Glass Telephone Booths.
Next to waste receptacles, the most
conspicuous objects on Budapest
streets are the advertising kiosks and
the glass telephone booths. Pay-sta-
ton calls are openly arrived at. At
first one feels like the casualties that
used to be displayed in glass cases in
the Paris morgue so friends might
identify the body.
Even from the outside, looking in,
it is a strange sight to gaze down
street at vista Of pay-station patrons
wrapped, not in cellophane, but in
glass. So spotless and crystal clear
is the glass that some citizen, some
time, must have extended his arm to
an acquaintance, only to jam the hard
surface that guards the speaker from
intrusion but not from public view.
Like Germany, Budapest has felt the
call of the sun, and it is as conscious
of it's fine, mild climate as California.
In summer one is virtually compelled
to eat in the open. A sudden shower
affords spectacle worthy of the
changing of the guards at the palace.
Walters swoop down on hundred ia.
bles and have them set up again, with
each dish in the precise place it was
abandoned. almost as soon as the
diner has located his position under
cover.
The city has utilized it's sunshine
and it's waters in the vast solaria and
numerous baths. Medicinal baths
come and go, just like other business
enterprises There the count was
nearly so thermal springs in use, yield.
ing some 10,0OOOO0 gallons of water
day, in behalf of rheumatism, govt,
and as wide variety Of other com
plants as the oldfashioned patent