The Coolidge examiner., 1932-12-16

enade by overhanging 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 of
tarry rope or other maratime para
phernalia along the water front.
The quays are lined with long
barges, their carved prOws suggest
ing the galleys that once piled the
river. Families live aboard, as do
our canalboat dwellers. Women
cook dinner in the lofty pilots shell
ter and tend the tiny flower gar
dens amidships, while stalwart men,
stripped to the waist, their bodies
| browner than the wheat they han
die, unload cargOes that are whisked
away by waiting trucks.
Tariffs rise and fall, but Budapest
remains a focal port of the great
stream that carries the commerce
of seven European countries.
Baths of ST. GelIert Hotel.
On the Buda side curiosity is like
ly to lead the stranger to that amaz-
ing institution, the municipal St
| Gellert hotel.
This new public building" typi-
fieS ancient Buda's very active con
tribution to modern Budapest, for
beneath it a spring pours forth near
ly half a million gallons of water
day, which water gushes from the
underlying rocks at a temperature
of la 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 superheat-
ed glass room. Masseurs take YOU
in merciless hand thereafter.
OF course, it is barely possible
you may be in perfect health. Pos
sibly, but you have to prove it in
city where medical baths constitute
major industry. If the st. Gellert
staff grudgingly comedies the point.
there still awaits you an enormous.
outdoor swimming pool. It is flanked
on three sides by rock-garden ter
races; the fourth is half an acre or
so of tea tables. Every - minutes
whistle gives the signal for arti
fetal waves. A gypsy band plays,
for the bathers in the hotel surf.
All Budapest swims, and the ST.
Gellert pool is a favorite luncheon
and tea-time rendezvous for the Buda
business man. as well as fashion
| parade for chic feminine bathing
suits. Should there be an impor.
tant telephone call during his SWIM
ming siesta. the bather is PACED by
a portable blackboard with his name
chalked there on, borne silently
around the edge of the pool by &
"bell hop"
Glass Telephone Booths.
Next to waste receptacles, the
most conspicuous object on Buda-
pest streets are the advertising Ii
osks and the glass telephone booths.
! Pay-station calls are openly ar
rived at. At first one feels like the,
casualties that used to be dis
played 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 a
street at a vista of pay-station pa
irons wrapped, not in cellophane.
but in glass. So spotless and crys-
tai clear is the glass that some cit
izen, some time, must have extend
ed 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 con
scious of its fine, mild climate as
California. In summer one is vir-
tually compelled to eat in the open
A sudden shower affords a spectacle
worthy of the changing of the
guards at the palace. Walters
swoop down on a hundred tables
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 un-
der cover.
The city has utilized its sunshine
| and it's walters in the vast solaria
and numerous baths. Medicinal
baths come and go. just like other
business enterprises. There the
count was nearly 80 thermal springs
in use, yielding some 100000 gal
Ions of water a day, in behalf of
rheumatism, gOut, and as wide
variety of other complaints as the
old-fashioned patent medicine men
|