I discovered my passion for sauna in New Zealand. Which is actually not true. It all started in Belgium (which is a beautiful city as I learned thanks to Trump) where we stayed in a big holiday house with my family on our first trip back „home“. The house had a sauna and every night I would go there with my siblings and we would chat and sweat for ages. It was a wonderful time and I thoroughly enjoyed the hotness and humidity.
Back in Wellington I found a voucher for a 4 weeks gym membership. Turned out the gym had a sauna and the voucher only cost $10 so I figured it was was worth checking out! So I told dearest Angie about it and we both decided we would give it a go- just for the sake of the sauna. But almost every time we went we felt like, while we were here we should do some exercise as well and usually ended up on a cross trainer. Or a pilates class that turned out to be yoga and was executed on mats that belonged to the gym and were wet with sweat of an unknown person that must have visited the class before (at least let´s hope it was the class before and not the day before. Yikes!). One can say we really earned our trips to the saune! At the beginning we tried to ignore the „wear your togs!“ signs and started sitting in there naked as we would have in Germany but soon figured that in New Zealand it was considered rude or something and wore our knickers. I mean, it was a woman´s only sauna anyhow. Don´t mind that little bit of breast, woman!
After our four week membership we were so in love with the sauna that we did not want to give it up anymore but we were not ready to sign up for a membership yet and thought that it would not hurt to shop around and see what other options were available. So we tried Habit on Evans Bay which was gym- wise pretty amazing, especially the pilates classes were top notch, but the sauna… what sauna? That tiny room where you had to push a button to heat it up first (which made exercising beforehand necessary)? And where you were not allowed to pour a decent amount of water over the rocks but had to use a spray bottle until your wrists gave up and then sat there for about thirty minutes until it switched itself off without a warning and you would eventually wondering why it wasn´t even warm anymore. I don´t want to use the word hot in one breath with this disappointing sauna experience. I remember that I once sat there for half an hour and still had cold feet. There was definitely something wrong here, which meant we had to move on and checked out the gym at the pool and as soon as we walked into the sauna we knew were we belonged. It´s a temple!
And if you are wondering if we are still lying on sweaty old gym mats- of course not! We learned and got our own :-)!
I have heard quite a bit about how amazing saunas in Germany can be and today I found out myself. They are indeed! Manfred, the kids and I went to a place which we figured must be super awesome as it was called „miramar“. Miramar describes itself as „holiday paradise“ (indeed!) with an adventure pool, sauna paradise and thermal bath. The adventure pool area consisted of a whole bunch of different kind of waterslides and Arthur and Louise spend the whole three and a half hours we were there on the slides without getting either tired or hungry so I can safely say it is at least as good as a long session of video games!
I spend my whole time in the sauna paradise and now my skin feels super, super, super soft. I think I mainly have to thank the steam bath with its different applications but later more about it.
At first I felt a little awkward walking into the sauna area, reading the „stricly tog free beyond this point“ signs. What should I do? I was still wearing my bathing suit and there were no changing rooms. Just strip right there and then walk in nude. Heads up high and all? Well… yes! So I threw my togs in my bag and left them together with my glasses in a cubicle and wrapped myself in a towel. I wasn´t ready to go blank in front of all these strangers yet!
It only took about twenty seconds though. I felt so ashamed, I quickly opened the first door on my right and stepped into – the steam room! I could not see a thing. Not only because I wasn´t wearing my glasses but mainly because it was so foggy everything behind the fog just disappeared. It was just like it would have been in a good horror movie where all of a sudden a headless rider comes rushing towards you, swinging a massive sword.
I was wondering what was going on in there- apart from the steam, when a voice told me that I should rather leave my towel outside because it would only get wet in the steam.
I squint my eyes to see where the voice came from and saw the silhouette of a woman sitting on a bench right opposite me. „Ah, yes, that makes sense!“ I said and swosh- took my towel off and went back outside to hang it on a hook beside the door. I went back inside and set down. I immediately felt little drops of water running down my skin as the steam condensed on it. This was neat! But what were these hoses right beside where the woman was sitting for? And what was she doing, rubbing her skin? There was only one way to find out- I asked her!
She told me the hoses would be used to hose down the benches, before and after you sit down. And that there was salt outside that would be used as a body scrub inside the steam room. I told her that I was nearly blind without my glasses and that it was my first time in Miramar (if only she knew what a big lie that was!) and she kindly offered her help and showed me where the salt was (outside, on a shelf). She also told me that there would be special scrubs available throughout the day, the next one would be the sandal wood one at 11.45am. Cool! I would be back then! I thanked her and moved on. I made my way around spa pools and to the next room with a sign: „Orange Sauna“. It had a container with fresh orange and lemon slices set on top of the rocks. It was wonderful!
While I was sitting in there I watched people entering and exiting the spa pools, they were all amazingly cool about being naked. It was fascinating and made me wonder if the awkward feeling came from thinking that others would find it awkward, while in fact it pretty much felt rather natural to wear nothing.
I stayed a while in the orange sauna and then decided to walk around the sauna landscape. I walked past rooms with different features: a crystal sauna, a relax lounge, another lounge with a fire place and another one with cystal salts and a foot bath. I thought it might have been time for the special steam sauna application so I went back.
This time I took my towel off without feeling awkward. I took one of the plastic cups with salt and entered. This time the scenery behind the steam was even more surreal: the room was full of people! At first I wasn´t sure if there was even a space left for me, but when I got closer to the benches, I found a last spot on the top bench and sat down. There was a 60ish year old man sitting to my left and he said something I did not get at first. He showed me his cup with salt and mumbled something. Or at least I thought he mumbled, it was his slang I could not understand at first but soon understood that the salt I had taken into the sauna was the usual one but that they had handed out a special one earlier and he still had some of the sandalwood salt left and offered to rub it onto my back. I chuckled to myself thinking that this was like a cult or something and decided to go with the flow. It was rather nice to get a back rub and when my neighbour explained that it was a fairly refreshing salt I could already feel the difference. He was right! It was pretty refreshing!
He must have figured out that I wasn´t familiar with Miramar (I just can´t stop mentioning the name!) and explained a few useful things and I learned that there would be a special „Aufguss“ in the woman´s only sauna by the lake soon, after which they would offer tea which sounded very appealing! But first I had to get something to drink. I was extremely thirsty! I had forgotten to bring a water bottle and I was thirsty like hell! I had not seen a water fountain earlier anywhere. Was this possible? Was there really none or was I just blind sighted? I decided to ask a staff member but could not find anyone. Maybe I should explain that it is considered rather unusual to talk to other people. Germans prefer to be left alone as they don´t want to be troubled with other people´s problems. But this was an emergency! I was close to drinking straight from the shower! I let a couple of people walk past and felt anger rising for not being able to find a staff member and now „having“ to pester a civilian. I oberserved that this feeling was a specific german one: something does not work the way it should, you get frustrated, you get upset, you look for someone to take the blame for it and you stubbornly stay in that feeling even though you know it really pisses you off and you could do something about it if you would concentrate on the solution rather than the problem. So I decided to concentrate on the solution and simply ask the next person. But the next problem arose: what was the german expression for „water fountain“? Was there even a german word for it? Or would germans use „water fountain“, too? Do water fountains even exist in Germany? Life is complicated and therefore I decided to beat around the bush instead and asked an elderly woman where I could get something to drink. She referred me to the cafe and I figured there was no way around it and asked for a water fountain. She shook her head. There was none. And I had no cash. I was screwed! But no, I wasn´t. I would just take one of the steam sauna salt plastic cups and drink out of it. There was plenty of water around, I would not die of thirst. It tasted pretty much of salt but things could have been way worse (like murky water after an earthquake, if anyone remembers…)!
After that problem was solved I decided to look for the woman´s only sauna with the special Aufguß. I found a door that led into the outdoor area. I walked past a pool and deck chairs, there were buildings to my left and my right, all saunas with different features and different temperatures (75, 80, 85 and 95 degrees- I burned my arse in the 95 degree one, but it had the best view onto a lake) and last but not least I found what I was looking for! There was a woman with a tray of plastic cups with a red liquid in it. That must be the tea I figured. I asked her if this was the woman´s only sauna and she said yes. I asked her if I was too late for the Aufguß but she said I would need to check, she would not know. So I entered the sauna and was immediately told off by a guy (eh? I thought this was the woman´s only sauna?) wearing a tiny, blue and white checkered towel that looked much more like a tea towel than anything else:“Next time watch the time!“ „Yes, sorry, am very, very sorry!“ I apologized and I climbed up the benches to sit on the top where I wouldn´t annoy anyone any further but where it would also get super hot as I would soon experience.
Tiny Teatowel man, who had quite a nice six pack, as far as I could see (which admittedly was not very far considering my dioptre), poured some liquid over the rocks, poured over some more and some more. I had experienced a similar kind of heat wall before- when an arsonist lay fire in the house we lived in in Berlin and Manfred and I tried to get out of the burning house and down the stairs. The closer we came towards the source of the fire the hotter it got until it became unbearable and we had to turn around). There was no turning around here so I just kept breathing and the heat wall quickly dissolved into smaller particles. But then he got his towel out I was about to say. Well I suppose that would have only been fair but he used another towel that he slapped into his audience direction. I had a feeling he wanted us to thank him for torturing us. I would not have been surprised if the woman, one after another, would have thrown themselves onto the ground and worshipped tiny tea towel man for being so awesome! He explained that it was allowed to leave the sauna if we could not bear it anymore. Well, thank you for allowing us to escape! Not that I would have cared to ask your permission, idiot! But all the woman went:“nonono!“ and stayed. So he did it again. Aufguss, more Aufguss, more Aufguss and then slapping the towel. The first woman gave up and left. He announced that that was it unless we would wish for another round. „Yeah man, bring it on!“ I said. Determined to show him he could slap his stupid brown (brown!) towel as many times as he wanted, he would not break ME! So he did it again. I tried not to blink or show any other signs of weakness. I had a feeling he slapped it especially hard into my direction. I closed my eyes and kept breathing.
It was over. He left and all the woman followed him. Later I got why: because they all enjoyed the tea! Talking about how rude it was to enter the sauna after the Aufguß ceremony had already started. When they saw me coming someone quickly added that this was not going against me. If I was willing to read bitchiness this was just the perfect way of emphasizing that they absolutely and totally meant me, but I refused to. Plus, I see why- if tiny tea towel man is in the middle of the ceremony of the heat wall, opening a door pretty much spoils it….
I drank my tea, which was sooooo good and then wandered around. I made it this far and I was willing to go even further, so I took the towel off and wandered around naked towards the lake and lay on a deck chair. This was crazy! There were people on a boat, people in the water and people on deck chairs and they were all nude and nobody gave a shit! I felt like I was in the middle of a german film!
I think I have been living abroad for so long that I have somewhat inherited how you are supposed to feel about things hence this all felt very strange to me. But I liked it! A lot! I wanted to know how it was to swim in a lake- naked, so I got up and did it. It was so much better! So I added to my bucket list that next summer I will go to the nude beach in Breaker Bay- if anyone wants to join me- feel free (caution wordplay!)!
