Trychydts in English

I haven’t been to Aquincum for eighteen years. We were taken there as an after-school activity; I remember being simply amazed by the sight. Back then, it was the largest ruin I had ever seen; as a kid, I was also a fan of Ancient Rome. I have read every book about I could place my hands on — stories from Roman mythology, The Journeys of Colonel Raevius — the imaginary adventures of a famous Hungarian historian, József Révay in the Roman Empire. (These studies became really handy at secondary school, when I was learning Latin for a year — instead of translating a given story, I just had to remember how it was, and match my memories to the text .) It was simply amazing to me to be able to walk on the actual streets of a Roman city. Yet, I haven’t been there since then — wherever we moved, it always was a bit far away from my home, and besides, after a few years my fascination towards the Roman culture did fade a bit.

When Leah was here from the States, I did consider showing it to her — however, since the temperature remained above 40 Celsius degrees all the time, I chose alternate programs instead. After all, getting a heat stroke among old pieces of stone surely wouldn’t have been fun at all. So on Sunday, when Mum suggested visiting it, I became fairly enthusiastic, especially because V. hadn’t seen it at all.

Going back to such an important scene of my childhood would have been nostalgic enough, but since I left my camera at home, I had to borrow my previous one from Mum. It was funny using this good old soapbox for making photos. I wanted to try whether I am able to make acceptable pictures with it, and after some practice, I seemed to succeed. Of course, on the scene, I could concentrate only on the composition, but after some photo editing at home, the results became quite satisfactory to me. These pics are much better compared to the ones I shot when last used this little Fuji. It seems true that if your pictures are not good enough, you should blame yourself, not the camera.

Back to Aquincum: it was sad to see that the local government doesn’t really care about this unique sight. The leaflet coming with the ticket is amazingly and unbelievably misinformative. There are very few information signs at the important sites of the ruin; you have to browse the miniature map on the leaflet for minutes just to find whether you stand in the hot-water or the cold-water pool of the bath. There is no designed route, your must wander around freely, sometimes finding, sometimes loosing the decaying paths; the ruins are dirty and neglected, and sometimes harshly violated. Some decades ago some crazy architectures built some brutal, concrete stairs above the bath, and scattered the site with “modern”, now rusting pavilions; they should have been definitely demolished by now.

There are some really good ideas, though; the exhibition is really nice, and there is a “chronoscope”. It’s a movable telescope, which instead of showing the ruins, contains a panorama picture showing the reconstructed sight of the city, so you can see how the buildings originally looked like.

With some proper management, it could be turned into a really spectacular sight of the town. Of course, it would definitely need an overall reconstruction and they should provide much more and much more organized information to the visitors. Someone should think it over what a curious tourist would like to do at the remains an ancient Roman city. I would also risk that there are even EU tenders for goals like this. And, although it’s a bit far away from the center of the city, it can be easily reached by public transport. And, on the very least, it is still a genuine Roman city.

On the whole, I did enjoy myselft, though; the place still has a very special athmosphere, and we had a lot of fun with Mum and V. I am always very impressed how much Mum is convinced that I can answer any questions with the greatest of ease — I have to admit that I am not remotely omniscient. I couldn’t even come up with a plausible theory about why the Romans insisted on being buried in stone sarcophagi. Shame on me.