Spas Across Eastern Europe

Spending a holiday in a mineral-rich thermal pool wasn't something that occurred to me before I traveled to Eastern Europe.

Maybe it's my heritage - growing up in Australia - that meant I had no idea of the spa holiday culture in Europe. But from the moment I moved to live in Bratislava, I started to hear of people spending their holidays in spa resorts.

Back home, we're a little more prudish than the Europeans, and I was always a little concerned about bathing naked in front of strangers. But my more extensive experience now has solved these problems: first, in many baths swimsuits are required (for example, when men and women bathe together); second, when bathing naked in smaller baths, everyone else thinks it's perfectly natural and nobody ever stared at me! And it's actually really refreshing.

So now when I hear of a new spa opportunity, I jump right in. Well, I test to make sure the water's not too boiling hot first. When I visited Budapest in Hungary, one of the highlights was the Gellert Baths. It's indescribable, really. And it cemented my liking for thermal spas in Eastern Europe.