Anonymous
Despite being a town of only 160,000 people, Szeged has a year-round, 50 metre swimming pool attached to a multi-purpose sports centre. Although the facility’s postal address is in Temesvari Korut, the public entrance can be found around the corner at the far end of Székely Sor in the Ujszeged district of the town, about a 15-minute walk from the centre across the River Tisza.
On entering through the facility’s main doors, ignore the reception desk directly in front of you. Instead, head up the staircase marked uszoda (Hungarian for swimming pool) to the right of the main entrance. You will find the cash desk for the swimming pool directly to your right at the top of the staircase. Both men’s and women’s locker rooms (helpfully labeled in English as well as in Hungarian) are in a corridor behind the cash desk. An attendant in the locker room will assign you a locker and give you its key. The entrance to the pool is down a zigzag slope situated between the two locker rooms. The pool is open air in the summer and covered with an inflatable tent in the winter. There's plenty of space poolside for stuff that you want to keep with you. There are poolside showers for use before entering the water that complement the rather more substantial showering facilities at the far ends of the locker rooms for when you leave. A rather unusual feature is that the pool has permanent, deck-level, turning boards - vertical perforated steel plates extending some 40 centimetres above the pool ends. To get into the pool you have to go off the starting blocks, down the steps, or in at the sides, which do not have turning boards.
On my early morning visit, the pool was fully laned for lap swimming. Weekday early mornings are busy because the 50 metre pool is used by squads in training. Only two lanes are set aside for casual lap swimmers. Signs specify the speed for each of the lanes. As the signs are only in Hungarian they are unlikely to offer much by way of guidance for foreign swimmers - best that you observe what's going on and make your choice. Although on my visits each of the two lanes were occupied by about a dozen swimmers, lane discipline was good so it was possible to pass others with relative ease. Also, it was evident that the slowest swimmers opted to use the 20 metre training pool beyond the 50 metre pool rather than the 50 metre pool itself.. I enjoyed the experience, so much so that I swam 1,500 metres, rather further than my more usual 1,000. One rather eerie aspect was that, in addition to the morning being misty to start with, the mist was complemented by ‘steam’ rising from the relatively warm water. When I went in, I could barely see the other end of the pool!
On entering through the facility’s main doors, ignore the reception desk directly in front of you. Instead, head up the staircase marked uszoda (Hungarian for swimming pool) to the right of the main entrance. You will find the cash desk for the swimming pool directly to your right at the top of the staircase. Both men’s and women’s locker rooms (helpfully labeled in English as well as in Hungarian) are in a corridor behind the cash desk. An attendant in the locker room will assign you a locker and give you its key. The entrance to the pool is down a zigzag slope situated between the two locker rooms. The pool is open air in the summer and covered with an inflatable tent in the winter. There's plenty of space poolside for stuff that you want to keep with you. There are poolside showers for use before entering the water that complement the rather more substantial showering facilities at the far ends of the locker rooms for when you leave. A rather unusual feature is that the pool has permanent, deck-level, turning boards - vertical perforated steel plates extending some 40 centimetres above the pool ends. To get into the pool you have to go off the starting blocks, down the steps, or in at the sides, which do not have turning boards.
On my early morning visit, the pool was fully laned for lap swimming. Weekday early mornings are busy because the 50 metre pool is used by squads in training. Only two lanes are set aside for casual lap swimmers. Signs specify the speed for each of the lanes. As the signs are only in Hungarian they are unlikely to offer much by way of guidance for foreign swimmers - best that you observe what's going on and make your choice. Although on my visits each of the two lanes were occupied by about a dozen swimmers, lane discipline was good so it was possible to pass others with relative ease. Also, it was evident that the slowest swimmers opted to use the 20 metre training pool beyond the 50 metre pool rather than the 50 metre pool itself.. I enjoyed the experience, so much so that I swam 1,500 metres, rather further than my more usual 1,000. One rather eerie aspect was that, in addition to the morning being misty to start with, the mist was complemented by ‘steam’ rising from the relatively warm water. When I went in, I could barely see the other end of the pool!