Róbert T. was an uninvited guest at Hotel Római for five days. On-site report.
Do you know that the Angelföld murderer was caught here? - I ask the people busy in the adjacent boathouse from the backyard of the Hotel Római, clinging to the ruined fence. The one-row boat is turned upside down, the sportily dressed lady and two gentlemen diligently treat the upside-down hull with a so-called secret lubricant. There are still visible traces of the previous night's rain, puddles flash here and there, which cyclists carefully avoid. The Roman coast is waking up. More and more people are walking, several have already taken a dip on the open beach.
We were here when the plainclothes police came. They also climbed into the courtyard, over the ruined fence next to the gate. He was hiding somewhere in the back, but he wasn't caught here. Now it is in a good place, say the dedicated maintainers of the single-rower. The lady adds: - We were already here when the hotel, and the Port, lived in its golden age. You know, there was so much life here - he laments, shaking his head. "Now... You can see, it could collapse soon."
The restaurant and bar called the Harbor was once a famous place for hospitality, just like the Hotel Római.
The former MSZMP and then MSZP nest has been abandoned since 2016, but it has a serious history.
It was built at the end of the 1920s as a corporate resort for the publisher of the political daily Esti Kurír. the entry of Szellemvárosok.blog.hu we can read that in 1948, during the Rákosi era, it was called the Szabadság üdülötelep, and after the 1956 revolution, it was renamed the MSZMP Római-parti Sporttelep, and it continued to function that way until the regime change.
"Although members of the party elite rarely visited here - they preferred Lake Balaton - but according to some sources, György Aczél was also a guest at the hotel"
– can be read in the blog post.
It is interesting that even today there are inventory plates from the Kádár period on the equipment. The blog writes about this: "The hotel was expanded, renovated and modernized in the early 1980s, but some of the furniture was not replaced even after the regime change, so it may have happened that the guests ate at tables with MSZMP inventory numbers until the hotel closed."
The hotel was named Hotel Római in 1991, and several socialist rallies were held in the building in the 1990s. And a tourism school also operated here - although it continued to operate as a hotel - where students could acquire practical knowledge. Some school paintings can still be found in the hotel today.
This complex of buildings, which can be said to be historic, was singled out by the Angelföld murderer, who presumably did not run into the homeless people who occasionally lived here during his five-day hiding.
The permanent residents of the hotel, one might say, climbed a ladder-like pillar to one of the pillars of the arcade row accessible from the backyard: a bench set up lengthwise, stolen from the nearby Danube bank, and a rope improvised from cables to climb up.
On the ground floor, all doors and windows are reliably sealed with square grid closing elements welded together from reinforced concrete steel. However, with the aforementioned skill, you can easily climb up to the first floor, just like the homeless do.
However, T. Róbert did not climb, or he just didn't have the courage to do it, like the suicide he mentioned, or he just didn't want to mingle with the permanent residents. In any case, he found a crib in the yard, the three elements of which were laid next to each other on the arcade plinth full of garbage, broken glass, and bottles of screw loosener, and he "made" his bed. A half-bottle of water is still lying by the bed today.
Returning to the Danube bank, to the free beach, a few children are obliviously splashing around with their parents, the lifeguards are peacefully chatting, the barbecues and cold drinks are selling well in the nearby Fellini Kultúr Bistro. Apart from us and the busy people in the boathouse, no one probably thinks that the Angelföld murderer has been hiding nearby for five days.
Featured image: Miklós Tekős
