“Put your hands up!” said the
large, naked man to my right.
“Good!’ he said and began
pummelling me from behind with a birch branch.
I was, of course, in the “banya”
or Russian bathhouse - a tradition as old as the hills and a true test for any
traveller. Upon paying the chain smoking old man at the door for a two hour
time slot, my Russian flatmate instructed me that now was the time for full
frontal nudity. You can’t wear swimming shorts in the banya. Well you can but
then everyone will paradoxically laugh at you.
It is somewhat similar to a
Finnish sauna although far warmer. After toasting yourself for several minutes
(I think I managed no more than 7 or 8 at a time) you either leap into a
freezing pool of water or roll in the snow. The birch or oak branch beating is
optional. I chose to do this partly out of my adventurous spirit and partly out
of fear that the burly men around me would call me a coward. My being English
was a subject of discussion and much amusement. There was nothing sinister about
it; it is simply rare for the banya regulars to meet a foreigner this far off
the Moscow tourist trail.
Once I had overcome the
conservative attitude towards nudity that we seem to have in Britain I found my
time there to be quite enjoyable. As well as the birch beating you get treated
to two other Russian sauna oddities – felt hats, used to keep the heat away
from your head, and large gulps of a drink called Kvass: a kind of lightly
fermented beer that tasted like life itself in my dehydrated state.
You see some pretty grizzly
stuff in the banya and end up feeling pretty weak from the constant hot-cold,
hot-cold cycle, but you leave the banya feeling completely reborn. My roommate
claims that a trip once a week will keep cold and flu away for life and to an extent
I believe him.
There is something very Classical
about the whole set up. Even in this “working man’s” banya it felt as much a
cultural ritual as a medical one. It was
even bordering on being a social event or rite of passage - a man inducted his
eight year old son to the tradition while I was there. As he withstood his
first minute of blazing heat, knees shaking under the sweaty intensity, a
rapturous applause erupted from everyone.
“He’ll be drinking his first
beer soon!” a man joked.
I left with the sense that I
have at last taken part in something truly Russian and something that I would
cautiously recommend any adventurous traveller or slavophile to do. Ideally go
with friends and go the whole hog the only thing you need to bring is a pair of
flip flops…
