tasty · bits

I went to the Russian baths a few weeks ago.  Many of my friends rave about them and herald the benefits that one receives from being crammed into some hot rooms with too many other people in towels, well worn and shared plastic shower shoes, spitting and shaving.  While walking into the several different steam rooms and saunas does make your body feel better and the steaming certainly helps relieve tense muscles, I am always a little surprised by the habits and activities that transpire in these moist and warm environments, life in a petri dish.  My visit to these baths reminds me of the two other baths I have been that tout similar benefits yet different petri  experiments.

Once I attended a Hot Springs Spa in none other, Hot Springs, Arkansas.  It was certainly a welcomed experience since my high school boyfriend, and another high school couple had been suffering a cold and rainy Spring Break in a tent on a small peninsula surrounded by very cold lakes of the Ozarks.  The Hot Springs meant for the first time in three days we would be warm, still not dry, but warm.  It was terrific, they had about 4 different hot tub like contraptions that radiated cooled water from the natural hot springs in the area; these tubs had to be cooled because the water comes from the ground entirely too hot.  There were cooling pools, which have never really appealed to me; I reign from the deep south where I have had the privilege of enjoying the warm  (bath temperature) and beautiful blue waters of  Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean for over 25 years now.  So, the cold shock treatments that prevent me from breathing, tighten every muscle in my body, and numb my toes and fingers don't appeal to me.  Yea, I don't make the best Yankee since the glorious Atlantic ocean getaways (Cape Cod) seem entirely to cold, rocky, and dirty to me.  Regardless, I was able to enjoy the other elements of this Hot Springs spa.  It too had a little bit of a petri dish feeling; it seemed that we had found the local mountain community hot spring bath spot.  We sampled the hot tubs, dipped our toes in the cool immersion pools, put our butts in those old school vibrating strap in devices that I suppose were intended to break up fat cells so that those who used this tool could show off more smooth and soft skin.  Finally, we tried out the steam room.  It was institution-like, fully tiled so that when you spoke you heard a tinny echo, and it was so steamy that you could not see your hand in front of you.  I remember being giddy with my fellow school mates and giggling out of control.  I couldn't get past the surreal quality of this nostalgic mountain stop.  I commented to my friend about how surreal I felt this place was and one of the locals chimed in to agree, "yes,  this place sure is, it is sooooo real."  That it was, it was certainly real.

The other experience was much more sophisticated and on the other side of the globe at an on-sen in Japan.  I went with a boy-friend's mother on the side of a small mountain in the winter.  On-sens are a family spot in Japan and are often attended  several times a week by the entire family.  The on-sens are mostly segregated, men on one side, women on the other.  When you visit the on-sen you are given fresh slippers and tiny towels.  The first stop is the locker room where you drop your clothes.  The next step is to bathe before you enter these natural hot springs.  When you bathe,  you sit on a small foot stool with your tiny towel over your parts and using a hand held shower head, you wash your body with soap and wet down your hair.  After our bath, the boy-friend's mom demonstrated how I was to wash, wait did I mention I got naked with a boy-friend's 50 something mother, yea she helped me to wash properly before I entered the hot springs.  It was amazing, the hot springs of course, not the naked older mom (although she is an amazing woman).  The hot springs were large shallow pools of which you could sit down on the bottom and lean you neck against the edge.  The fantastic element of this on-sen was that there were two separate pools, one was inside a steamy warmly tiled room, the other was outdoors surrounded by one of the most beautiful views I have witnessed in my life.  There was snow on the ground, buddhas surrounding the pool, and mountains topped by snow in all directions.  Wow.  That was fantastic.  After people bathe in the pools, they tend to lounge on the floor in a common area and drink beer, sake, coffee, and smoke cigarettes.  Japan truly is a land of contradiction.  Go bathe for your health, drink for your health, and enjoy a good smoke?

Well back to NYC East Village Russian Baths...
Here they have 5 co-ed nights and 1 night for women and 1 night for men.  Co-ed night is mostly round Russian looking men (I kept looking out for St. Nick, since I thought I saw his brother) in shorts that are too small for both their bellies and balls, scratching themselves while they observe the 3 women that are prancing around carefully, so as not to slip, in there too small bikinis.  Everyone was sweaty and red in the face, and then the man next to me in the dry sauna, who  wore shaving cream the entire time and had a few leaves stuck to his belly from his oak tree olive oil leaf slapping treatment (I though he might have rolled around in the dirt at Thompkins Square park first) spat a huge loogie at the heat source of the sauna.  Then suddenly I recalled the sign at the door of the special Russian hot rock room, "There is to be no spitting, shaving, and (something else that I can't recall) in this room." 
The night in the saunas was invigorating, even without a shock in the cold immersion pool.  I can't wait to go back and spend a little longer time and perhaps get my fanny slapped by the olive oil oak tree leaves...

My evening was concluded by eating a little Russian food, some caviar, followed by some good Russian Vodka.  Certainly, an evening well spent.