Many years ago, in college, I spent a semester abroad in Budapest, Hungary. Hungary is known for many things: Beautiful architecture, delicious (and cheap!) food, body odor that can peel the skin off your face, and their bath and spa treatments. The Turkish Baths found all around Budapest are quite the experience: Both indoors and out, roughly 99 percent of the people in attendance choose to strip nude in order to soak the mineral-rich (and sometime boiling hot) waters into every — and I mean every – nook n’ cran. It is because of this reason that I tried to avoid the baths for as long as possible. Then, one balmy June day, my friend convinced me to don my favorite board shorts and Bar Mitzvah tee and hit the public outdoor baths (seen here), if only just to say I went.
The baths were crowded that day, friends, but nothing we couldn’t handle. We tip-toed our way into one of the less crowded pools, where salty old Hungarian men were busy playing chess on floating checkerboards. And immediately, my body relaxed. Ahh, this was the life. The dormant 5-year-old within came doggy paddling out, and within minutes, I was floating on my back without a care in the world. Arms outstretched, face barely sea level, I floated peacefully for a few minutes, until I felt something under my hand. Hard yet smooth. My mind adrift, I let my hand wander for a few seconds, patting this foreign object in an attempt to identify it. No luck. Slowly, I turned my head… only to find out that I had, in fact, been fondling the crotch of an elderly man swathed in a Communist era speedo. The man, let’s call him “Gramps“, was also floating, had both hands under his head and was grinning ear to ear — an appropriate response to my lengthy re-interpretation of a “How’s Your Father?” I spent the rest of the afternoon cornered at the opposite end of the pool, exfoliating crotch germs from my hand with a pumice and a blowtorch, and reliving my pubic pool nightmare over and over again.
I tell you this story because, until today, I always believed my Hungarian Baths tale to be one of the more scarring public pool stories from around the globe. That is, until I saw this video, via Neatorama, of a public wave pool in Tokyo so crowded, no question a few girls walked away from the experience accidentally preggers. You really have to watch this video to believe it. So count you’re blessings folks, and just be happy you don’t live in Tokyo.
