When in Rome...

With Olaf being gone this whole past week, Esther needed a day away from the kids today. Even though I take care of the kids during the day, they end up crying and screaming during the night and have to go sleep in her room, and Gustav gives her a fight every time she needs to get him dressed in the morning or ready for bed at night. She hardly gets any sleep and Gustav wears her out. So today she told Olaf to take the kids to the animal park and she and I went to the sauna in Sindorf. It was definitely a new and, interesting, experience.

The saunas here aren't like most of the ones in the states, where there's a sauna room in a gym or fitness center or something like that. This was an entire spa dedicated to the whole sauna experience, and the whole thing felt very Roman. There were gardens and pathways outside for you to walk around and cool off, and there were outdoor pools and fountains and waterfalls for you to go in. On one side of the complex they had basically 2 rows of small bungalows that small groups of people could just sort of claim for themselves and hang out/sleep in all day, and then there was another long enclosure for the same purpose, but for more people. In the main building there were showers, a hot whirlpool, a warm salt bath, hot and cold wading pools, all sorts of different pools and baths and things. Then there were also several dry saunas, steam saunas, aromatherapy saunas, and an infrared sauna, which they call a Biosauna, or vegetarian sauna. It was really kind of cool.

Even more so than the complexity of the saunas here, there are 2 things that really differentiate German and American saunas. First, the entire complex, aside from the toilets, is mixed gender. And, more awkwardly, nudity is strictly enforced. That's something that just wouldn't fly back home, unless you're at Glen Eden Sunclub, and that's still weird. You can wear a robe or towel when you're not in a sauna or a pool, but otherwise, nothing. While in the sauna, though, you have to have a towel under you at all times because they don't want your nasty sweat on their benches/everyone else. For the most part, though, people were just hanging out naked. Walking from one sauna to the next, or to the showers, or pools, or even getting fresh cool air outside was all done without anything on but a pair of sandals. Oh, and did I mention there were children there? Yeah, going to the sauna is apparently a family affair.

When you get to the sauna, the first thing you have to do is take a shower, because you can't go in any pools or saunas if you're dirty. Esther and I first went to one of the dry saunas that was a moderately high temperature and stayed in there for about 12 minutes. Then we got out and walked around outside to cool down before going inside, showering again in cool water, and then wading through the cold wading pool (which had rocks on the bottom to massage your feet) followed by the warm wading pool, and then a dip in a cold bath before drying off and going to sit down and relax. We repeated this process every time we got out of a sauna. The second sauna we went in was a steam sauna where they had put eucalyptus oil on the rocks, so it smelled really refreshing and cleared the sinuses/lungs really well. The third and final sauna we went in was a really intensely hot dry sauna. It kind of felt like my skin was on fire at times. This whole process lasted about 4 or 5 hours, so most of the time is spent just relaxing. The eucalyptus one, which they call the grotto, was my favorite. Next time Esther wants to try the infrared one, and then she figures we can each do whatever it is that works best for us since we will have tried every type of sauna they have there.

When we got home this evening, Esther told Olaf, "Well, today we've learned everything you could possibly know about a penis," and laughed about how she even saw one guy who wasn't even an inch long. Yeah, they're definitely more open about that sort of thing over here. Then Olaf told Gustav to tell us what he learned about penises today. Apparently Gustav got to see a donkey dong at the animal park, and he told us all about how big it was, while Olaf laughed the whole time. As I said, it was definitely an interesting experience today. Needless to say, I don't have any pictures to share.