A festival story. The characters are imagined; the clothes are real.
At thirty degrees the hot pool smoked like a kettle the size of a ballroom, and somewhere in the steam was the woman Ábel had been writing love notes to for three weeks, in his best friend's handwriting.
Snow lined the stone balustrades. The yellow walls of the old bath glowed gold under the party lights, and from the colonnade a disco house set rolled across the water: a chopped string stab, a filter easing open a notch at a time, the four-on-the-floor kick rippling the surface.
Ábel stood at the pool's edge in a hooded cloak over his swim trunks, his flip-flops crusted white, the wristband that opened his locker cold against the bone. Below him, shoulder-deep in water a hundred degrees warm, sat Gergő, snapback on backward, its gold-lined eye beaded with steam.
"Twelve fifty-two," Gergő said, without looking up. "She's not coming."
"She's coming."
"Then I'm leaving."
"You're in a hot pool in January," Ábel said. "Nobody leaves a hot pool in January."
✦
You ring the bell twice for cyclists and once for pigeons. The pigeons never move. I understand the pigeons. — G., the bakery on the corner
✦
Three weeks earlier, Gergő had leaned across the bakery counter at closing, flour to the elbows.
"You write words for a living."
"I write subtitles," Ábel said. "Forty-two characters a line, two lines, and the actor's already talking."
"So you're fast." Gergő slid a paper bag across the counter. A cocoa roll, still warm. "The tram driver. Hajni. Six-ten, every morning, one kakaós csiga, exact change. She says köszönöm like it's a whole sentence. I want to put something in the bag."
Ábel knew exactly which tram driver. For a year he had ridden her number 2 along the river, standing at the front of the first car, Parliament sliding past in the dark, saying nothing at all.
He wrote the first note in eleven minutes.
Gergő copied it out in his round baker's hand and read it twice. Then he looked at Ábel for a long moment, folded it into the bag, and said nothing either.
✦
Twice for cyclists, yes. When were you ever on my tram, baker? — H.
Closer than you'd guess. You hum when the lights at the bridge go green. You don't know you do it. — G.
✦
Twenty-two notes. Eleven replies on the backs of bakery receipts, each one longer. Gergő read them at the counter, leaving floury thumbprints on every one, and Ábel read them on the tram with her humming three feet away.
Then the last one came, and Gergő set it on the flour bin like it might go off.
"I can hand her a roll," he said. "I can't say these."
"You won't have to." Ábel tapped the receipt. "You'll be in the water. I'll be at the edge, an arm behind you. I say it, you say it."
"There's a play like that."
"It ends in a convent, fifteen years later."
"We'll stop before the convent." Gergő said it so quickly it might have been his idea all along.
✦
Saturday, the bath party. The hot pool, one o'clock, by the steps. No more paper. Bring me the next one yourself. — H.
✦
At one minute to one she came down the stone steps.
She left her flip-flops in the long row at the edge, the way everyone did, and slid into the water in a one-piece swimsuit: seven lit circles stacked from collarbone to hip, violet to red, strung on fine gold geometry. A green laser cut through the steam overhead and turned it into rooms.
She found the snapback first. Of course she did. Gergő hung it by the till every morning.
"Baker."
Gergő turned scarlet under the cap.
Ábel leaned into the steam by the stone pillar, just another dark hooded shape at the rail, and murmured, "Tell her the lasers make the steam into rooms."
Gergő said it. She laughed. Ábel fed him the next line, and the next, and Gergő carried each one across the water like a full cup.
"Your voice is the first warm thing in my morning," Ábel breathed.
"Your roll is the first warm thing in my morning," said Gergő.
Hajni laughed so hard she slid under to the chin. A gap opened in the steam, and Ábel tugged his hood lower until the white closed again. When she came up she drifted closer, her knees almost touching Gergő's.
Then she asked, "Which morning did you first see me?"
Gergő's head turned toward the rail.
And Ábel answered, not in a murmur. "A Tuesday in March. A boy came running for the doors with a cello on his back, and you waited until the whole case was through."
Hajni went very still.
She looked past Gergő, into the steam.
"Who said that?"
✦
Ábel pushed back his hood and stepped down to the waterline.
"I did. Every note. He asked me to help, and I…"
"Meant them," Gergő said.
They both stared at him.
"I've never been on your tram." Gergő pushed the wet cap back on his head. "I start at four. I've been on a bike in the dark since I was fifteen." He looked up at Ábel, steam curling off his shoulders. "You think I didn't know at the first note? I don't know a single thing about pigeons."
"Then why…"
"Who do you think added Name the place to the bottom of the last note?"
The bass dropped out. The filter swept open on a lone disco guitar, and for four bars the pool held nothing but steam and that guitar.
Gergő turned to Hajni. "The rolls were me, though."
"I know." She touched his arm. "Always the end piece. Always warm. I noticed every morning." And then, like it was a whole sentence: "Köszönöm."
Gergő laughed, a short, startled sound, and stood up in a rush of water. He pulled off the snapback, pressed it into Ábel's hand, and waded away toward the activity pool, where the whirlpool ring was spinning a dozen dancers in slow circles. Ábel watched him reach the edge, say something to a stranger in a red swim cap, and get a laugh back.
His own words. Every one.
Ábel set the cap on the balustrade, dropped the cloak on the stone, and stepped into the heat.
The snow had started, fine as flour, melting before it touched the water. Hajni waited with steam rising from her shoulders and the seven circles shimmering under the surface.
"So," she said. "You."
"Me."
"Say the next one yourself."
He did the count first, out of habit, and gave it to her as a subtitle. "He asks to kiss her. Twenty characters. One line."
"Yes," she said. "Three."
Her mouth was warm and her hair was cold, and the kick returned under them, steady as a pulse. Snow settled in her hair and stayed there. Neither of them moved toward the steps until the lights came up at two.
✦
She likes the end piece. Don't tell her I told you. — G. (I wrote this one, too.)
✦
Monday, 6:40, the embankment stop. Ábel stood in the cloak with the hood up, a paper bag warm in its side pocket, the river black and Parliament still lit.
The 2 came round the bend, yellow in the dark.
At the front of the first car, the driver looked up, saw him, and rang the bell twice.
He wasn't a cyclist. He didn't move, either.
The cloak, the swimsuit and the cap from the hot pool
Mystical Egypt taught a lawyer to dance at a frosty lake in Motion to Dance and raced a parade headdress through a Bahia rainstorm in Seven Suns Before Sunset. In Budapest it went into the steam. The art pairs the seven chakras, a column of glowing circles from violet to red, with gold Egyptian glyphs, ankhs and sacred geometry on a night-dark field. Hajni's one o'clock outfit is the Mystical Egypt women's one-piece swimsuit ($65), the chakra column running straight down the front and a low scoop back in gold linework.
Ábel's robe on the snowy deck and his coat at the tram stop is the Mystical Egypt men's festival cloak ($250): rows of gold glyphs and ankhs down the front and the chakra column climbing the back. Gergő's cap, worn backward in the hot pool and handed over when it counted, is the Mystical Egypt snapback hat ($40).
- One-piece swimsuit: 75% recycled poly / 25% elastane, 225 g/m² · double-layer front · scoop neck and low scoop back · regular fit, XS–3XL · dye-sublimated, so the colors won't fade and the image won't crack.
- Zipper cloak: micro-mink poly outer with an ultra-soft microfiber fleece lining in black or white faux fur, 200 g/m² · double front zipper · heavy drawstrings · 4 pockets (2 interior stash pockets, one zippered; 2 deep side pockets) · unisex fit, XS–5XL.
- Snapback: 100% poly, 150 g/m² · plastic adjustable band · one size fits most.
Pack for your own winter soak: women's swimwear · men's cloaks · snapback hats
What do you wear to a thermal bath party in Budapest?
Wear real swimwear and bring flip-flops, a towel and a warm layer for the walk between the changing rooms and the water. In January the air hovers around freezing while the outdoor hot pool runs near 100°F, so a hooded cloak or robe on deck turns the coldest stretch of the night into the coziest.
- The bath's own rules: the Széchenyi Thermal Bath FAQ asks for swimwear designed for swimming (no street or sportswear in the pools), makes slippers mandatory in the bath but not in the pools, requires swim caps only in the lap pool, and swaps your ticket for a wristband that stays on until you leave.
- Know your pools: the bath's three outdoor pools run from 26–28 °C in the lap pool and 30–34 °C in the activity pool to 38 °C (about 100°F) in the thermal pool.
- The January night: NOAA's 1991–2020 normals put Budapest's average January low around −1 °C (30°F), so the steam is thick and snow on the balustrades is a real possibility.
- Disco house dress code: groove, color and a little sparkle. A printed swimsuit under the lights, a statement cap, and something with a hood for the deck.
Come summer, Hungary's big open-air gathering is O.Z.O.R.A., which fills the farmland valley at Dádpuszta, near Ozora, with psytrance, world music and ambient from late July into early August, with nights of 55–60°F.
Frequently asked questions
Can you swim in Budapest's outdoor thermal pools in winter?
Yes. Budapest's big thermal baths keep their outdoor pools open through winter, and Széchenyi Thermal Bath is open every day of the year. Its outdoor thermal pool holds about 38 °C (100°F), so you soak in hot water while the air sits near freezing. Steam fills the courtyard, and snow can settle on the stone around you.
Do you need flip-flops at a Budapest thermal bath?
Yes. Széchenyi Thermal Bath makes slippers or flip-flops mandatory around the bath, though you take them off before you get into a pool. You also need swimwear designed for swimming, since street clothes and sportswear aren't allowed in the pools. A swim cap is only required in the lap pool.
What is Cyrano de Bergerac about?
Cyrano de Bergerac is Edmond Rostand's verse play, first staged in Paris in December 1897. The swordsman-poet Cyrano loves his cousin Roxane but writes love letters for the handsome, tongue-tied Christian, and even speaks for him in the dark beneath her balcony. Roxane falls for the voice in the letters, and learns the truth years later.
Written by Magus & Lylyth Fawn, the Los Angeles artists behind Magus Fawn. Magus makes VR and digital visionary art and produces Psy EDM. Lylyth makes fractal digital art and runs design and customer care. We've been selling wearable art since 2020 on Etsy (4.7★ from 144 reviews as of October 2026) and here at magusfawn.com. Come say hi on Instagram @magusfawn.
0 comments