Bridget Hourican begins a mini-series on August in the new EU countries with an insider's report on Budapest summers - and the alternative

So you're in Budapest to buy an apartment. Or you've already bought the flat and think you'll spend a few weeks in it before renting it out; or you're taking advantage of cheap flights to have a few days' break in this "Paris on the Danube", or you're here for the Sziget, Europe's largest week-long music festival, or you're at a conference, or on a stag . . . Whatever: you're in Budapest in August.

It is bakingly hot. Budapest is one of those inland continental cities, like Madrid, Krakow, or Berlin, where the heat clamps down and no sea breeze flutters. It has one advantage in this heat: the thermal baths.

There are about seven of them spread around the centre. Most guidebooks direct you to the Széchenyi and the Gellért because they're the most beautiful (like swimming in a ballroom). But the Széchenyi isn't at its best in summer: it's crowded, there's no grass, and the water isn't cold enough. In summer, Hungarians go to Palatinus on Margit Island because it has an enormous pool complete with wave machine and a nude sunbathing section. They call it the Palatinus Strand, but only because they have no real strand.

More sedate are the Lukács Baths in Buda, near the Danube. They're set in the grounds of a hospital and have an old world 19th-century sanatorium feel. There are two blissfully cold outdoor pools and dark indoor thermal pools. However, if you're in Budapest for more than three days in this heat, you'll need a better source of water: brave the Balaton Lake (see accompanying article) or go to the baths at Csillaghegy.

These are outside the centre (a few stops on the HEV metro line) and the pools are icy. Like elephants to jungle watering holes, city-dwellers come here to re-hydrate.

Hungarian cuisine is famous in the region (get Poles waxing lyrical on the subject), but it has an inbuilt problem: it's all geared to the long, cold winters. It's heavy, doughy and meaty, and very welcome when it's minus five outside.

But it seems that catering for the cold exhausted Hungarians' culinary ingenuity; they have five summer months (May-September), but no food to lighten them. In August restaurants serve beef goulash, stuffed paprika, and turkey breast with dumplings, same as in January. No fresh salads, no pastas lightly tossed in oil, no olives.

I've brought this up with my Hungarian friends and - "gyumulcs leves!" they invariably cry defensively. So okay, I'll give them "gyumulcs leves" - cold , creamy fruit soup - but that's all, and it's not enough.

If you have your own cooking facilities, buy some of the wonderful vegetables in the huge covered 19th-century markets at Fovam Tér and Hunyadi Tér. (Yes, it remains a mystery why these wonderful vegetables aren't being turned into wonderful salads.

If it seems a pity not to try local cooking, then clear your stomach by skipping breakfast and go to Kadar on Klausal Tér, for the best and cheapest food around (only open for lunch). The daily menu is in Hungarian but the maitre d', a large imposing man who looks like Marlon Brando, will translate. He only speaks "menu English", so don't ask him anything else.

Afterwards - digestion permitting - head up to the Buda hills on the number 11 bus. Looking out the windows you'll see nestling behind trees the fabulous turreted art nouveau villas, which can't be bought for a song.

At the end of the line, walk through the woods to hilly plains where you can take flying lessons in old style aircraft straight out of Louis de Funes' La Grande Vadrouille.

At night, Budapest rises to the challenge of summer drinking much better than it does to summer eating. This is a city of seasonal nightlife. In winter, you go to corner bars and cellar clubs, which in summer stand empty as everyone floods to the courtyard bars and Danube discos.

The courtyard bars are all semi-legal - kind of squats in half-derelict buildings waiting to be bought up by Irish investors, demolished, and turned into shopping centres or car parks. You never know which courtyards will open for the summer - every May the rumour starts up: all the kérts (courtyards) are being closed down!

So far, this hasn't happened, but lots of them only get one season. This year Szimpla (Kazinczy utca) and the West Balkans (behind the Corvin cinema on the Korút) are going strong.

Along the Danube are huge, horrible but unique clubs, called things like Zold Pardon, Rio, and Buddha Beach. They have dance floors, multiple bars, mega screens, and are tacky-tacky, but you can dance till dawn, if you can bear the music.

Much better though, if you're around August 10th-17th, is to head to the Sziget (island) where a festival (previously known as Pepsi Sziget for obvious sponsorship reasons) is in its 13th year. This is not like Glastonbury, Oxegen or other music festivals.

Good weather is guaranteed, space is unlimited - a whole small Danube island is given over to it - and there is everything from gypsy music to rap to sword swallowers. This year's headliners are Franz Ferdinand, Nick Cave, Morcheeba, and Youssou N'Dour.

Hang round till August 20th, the national day, and take up position somewhere on the Danube banks in early evening. The fireworks over the water are some of the best you'll see anywhere.

If your time is limited, just go to the Statue Park and the Terror Háza for a flashcard understanding of the communist ancien regime. These two memorial museums apart, the Soviet era is fast dissolving into the stones as Budapest turns back into Vienna's poorer, more bohemian, more fun sister city.