Sauna #3: Arla

Sauna Arla's website completely defied deciphering; google translation spat it back out, and anyway there didn't appear to be much actual website. All the pertinent details hide out in the logo block, and otherwise I only got that they seem to be hosting a lecture series. I'd heard a rumor it was a sauna/art gallery, sounded like a hip place. Something about murals on the walls...

The entrance gate is an impressive bit of welding, and the tunnel leading from the street into the courtyard tightropes between folksy kitsch and angular impressionism. I admit, the walk in got me hoping for tattoos and day-glo sauna hats. There are mysig lights beside the door, and it looked like the courtyard serves as a cooling patio. The attendant's booth is hung with Sauna Arla logo t-shirts, bedazzled AC/DC flipflops and framed magazine pages. There's a little basket of cherry tomatoes on the counter, and carafes of water topped with new glasses like an outdoor cafe. The changing room is painted bright colors, and there are a ton of excellent art-scene magazines in the very sparse cooling-area. So maybe Arla is arty, but its no gallery.

On my own again (I guess the place is full on weekends, but not in the post-dinner hours of Thursday evenings), the attendant showed me around, making sure – “since it is your first time at Arla” – that I knew how to steam the stove “safely.” Not properly. Safely. You see, the stove at Arla is the size of a phone booth. It's electric, but electric like the power plants of your favorite 1930s monochrome industry-and-man photo. Through a hatch exactly at head height, dark stones smolder and mutter.

The whole room was colorless tile and concrete. The stove dominated a full sixth of the space. The heat dominated everything. The kind of heat that wants you to submit to it, and is very confident. Heat filled every corner, every crack. Walls and floor and stairs and stove were locked in a thermal feedback loop. The benching on the top stair was hot to the touch. (Its hard to make wood hot to the touch.) Standing on anything put my feet in danger of blistering. Leaning against anything was a Very Bad Idea. I made myself comfortable with extra sauna “pillows” (little lengths of benching meant to lean against, or sit upon if you're making use of one of the lower stairs); one at my back, one under my feet. From this refuge, I set about my sauna in a safe (and awed) manner.

You steam the sauna at Arla like you're practicing boxing, it's all timing and accuracy. The ducking and retreating are also like combat training. You nimble your way down to the floor, scoop up a good-sized ladle of water, take careful aim, and heave it into the maw of the stove. Then you best duck, drop the ladle back in the bucket, and scurry like an edible thing back up to your seat. With this technique you are almost certainly guaranteed to 1) minimize time toasting your tootsies on horizontal surfaces, 2) show proper respectful genuflection to the fire-monster in the room, and 3) avoid scalding your face with water vaporizing at velocity.

And if you do, you are then rewarded with the most astonishing, embracing, muscular steam a sauna-lover could hope for. It rolls towards you in bellows, digging its fingers into shoulders and neck, reaching around to prod your back muscles. And you relax, all at once, thoroughly surrendered to the Great Beast Healing. “Lovely” is too pastel a word for this steam, “impressive” is too clean-edged, “overwhelming” too violent. What's wanted is a word for a particularly elegant excavator, or some prehistorically large animal galloping. “Majestic” works, so does “behemothic.” I imagine the wrathful compassion of daikinis would be similar.

About an hour into this ritual, I finally realized the addictive quality of sauna as an endurance sport. In between the thrilling steam drill, I sat on the top stair being massaged by the steam-mastadon, and sweating. I did so for as long as seemed reasonable, then went out for quick cold showers. My usual sauna cues seemed not to manifest; I felt no giddiness, no palpitations, no woozyness, no ineffable feeling of resolution. I did feel as if I was being completely wrung out, but as this is not one of my personal sauna-sensations, I felt more curious about What Would Happen Next than anything. I kept going back for mastadon. I tapped into the sauna archetype known as the Heroic Sufferer. I fidgeted, and tried out different positions. I spent a lot of time trying to decipher the thermometer. It seemed stuck, patinaed to the point of permanence, topped out at 140. But that didn't seem right, since I wasn't, y'know, dead. (I expect the needle should have been hovering between 90-100 – Mr. Attendant agreed.)

Eventually, and all at once, I knew I Was Done. My scamper had been massaged into a wobble, and I thought it best to just keep my head down and bow my way past the stove and out the door. The shower couldn't get cold enough to calm the fire now living inside my skin. I felt like I had been given some kind of Monster Fire Transfusion, and I was positive I would never be cold again. But neither was I in any state to put street clothes back on. So I spent a completely, serenely limp half an hour catching up on the Helsinki art scene, and called it a night.

Sauna Arla Bastu: "Washes All"

Sauna #2: Hermanni

I almost missed it, hawk-eyed though I was, perched in the #6 tram. Hämeentie Street plays cute little games with it's address numbers – the left and right sides don't keep pace, and are happy to skip a decade or 2 on a whim. I'd almost begun thinking I'd gone too far, when I saw a little sign, shining through the rainy gloom, from the corner of a large apartment block.

Ducking around back I found that magical door named Sauna, and headed down to the basement level, and a hallway that would have been at home in any midcentury school building. A smiling lady in a marquee-booth between women's and men's doors later, I was in the locker room and on my own for the next 2 hours. (Being alone, I took the liberty of taking pictures, which I somehow always feel hesitant about in bathhouses.)

Hermanni Sauna is what I imagine any neighborhood bath could be like; comfortable and straightforward, not leaning in any particular direction. A clean, well-used, commonly-loved bath. The showering room is only for showering, the drying and dressing room for exactly what it says. Not much room for socializing or luxuriating, high function-to-form ratio.

The stove room is similarly simple, wood panels and wood benches, a lovely room long enough to feel a real heat differential from door-end to stove-end. The first public place here I've seen where the low bench could really be for sitting, maybe a nod to a multigenerational (multitemperational?) clientele. The stove is a monsterous thing; a cylinder of stones a solid 4 feet tall, caged by steel mesh. Through the gaps I could see long loops of heating element glowing orange. For all that it seemed a fairly timid stove, giving mild and even heat. Id guess somewhere between 70-80? (There was just a thermometer-shaped clean patch on the wall.) Throwing a ladle of water on it (really nice round-belly ladles!) didn't have a strong effect. The stove always stopped sizzling before any wave of heat rolled toward me, and the wave was short-lived. Smelled of hot metal and rainy asphalt. The heat was easy to spend long minutes in, easy to leave and return to, easy to tell when I was finished.

Sauna Hermanni -- Neighborhood bathhouse.

Sauna #1: Kotiharjun

“Smells Like Home” Sauna

As I walked up, men young and old were cooling themselves in towels under the huge red neon SAUNA sign, along the sidewalk to the front door. The neighborhood reminded me of any urban apartment district, a bright-lit restaurant-and-laundry street just around the corner.

The tiny foyer was high traffic, cramped with a deep freeze for birch whisks, a cooler for hard & soft drinks, brightly colored piles of towels, and photocopied instructions on the walls. The attendant stood in a tiny closet of an office with a half-door and a vibe like a maitre d'. One door, propped open, looked down a few steps into the men's changing/cooling room, wooden lockers and tables and dozens of body types roaming pinkly around. The air in the foyer smelled strongly of layers of sweat, and clean laundry.

Up the stairs out of the miasma and through frosted glass doors, the women's changing/cooling room looked similar, though less thoroughly used. The odd fake plant, wood lockers and varnished benches and picnic tables. The air smelled lightly like a half dozen kinds of soap, and delicious roasting sausages from a friendly gathering in progress.

Unrobed and farther in, the large shower room had nubby pebbled flooring and excellent showers, the kinds here with both mobile and static shower heads, and a toggle to switch between. Plenty of hooks to leave my towel, cement benches on which to commandeer a few square inches to stash my shower supplies, if I'd had any. (Note to self: bring shower supplies.)

At the far end of the shower room is a wooden-handled wooden door named Sauna. The stove room is cement, filled with piles of cleanly split wood, and walking in, it is simply warm. On the left is a giant, impressive (incinerator-, crematorium-worthy) furnace of a stove. There are stern warnings not to mess with this oven in 3 languages (the English one calls it the Owen.) Past the stove is a kind of amphitheater of cement stairs rounding 2 walls, the top level about 4 feet from the ceiling and decked with narrow pine planks. 2-foot lengths of similar benching are propped up for backrests.

On the top stair the room smelled of wood smoke, hot pine and clean steam. Standing on the middle stairs I caught the mammalian scent of warm bodies – it actually was very homey. Stepping off the stairs each time I left the sauna for a quick cold shower, I could smell chlorine, and the metal of the stove, but these scents slunk around the floor.

The heat built with each step up, at first I was surprised that only the top stair was decked for a bench, but it's only at the top that the air is finally hot enough to draw sweat. The wall behind me radiated heat, I was held on all sides by heat. The thermometer on the wall behind me kept its needle hovering around 90. Each time a woman entered or left the stove room, she would ask if we wanted more steam. She'd open a little lever on the stove for a second or two, and hissing billows would roll towards us. As it wrapped around us, the air got quiet and heavy, and everything seemed to go into soft focus. Soft and round, it was still the kind of steam that bows your head for you. My lungs felt bigger with every breath, my muscles longer and my skin smoother. Each time I left the room, I cranked the showers colder. By the end of 2 hours of bowing to heat and ducking under cold water, sitting on the top stair felt like floating.

Kotiharjun Sauna -- Helsinki's oldest wood-fired public sauna.

A Prelude To All This Bathing

I love bathing. Soaking. Sweating. Steaming. I love bathing of all sorts. I love giant claw-foot cast iron tubs. I love dinner-plate cascade showerheads. I love wooden rooms with black stoves breathing the scalding perfume of forests. I love pale smooth tiled rooms veiled in curls of warm mist.

I love camping solar showers and watertank farm showers and jumping in rivers. I love exfoliating with beach sand and painting myself with mud. I love homemade salt scrubs and candlelit tubs and chromotherapy and fragrant, herb-infused water. And yes, if it's all I've got, I also love rickety prefab shower cabinets and thumpy fiberglass tubs.

And I love bathhouses. All-wood and tatami, onsen-inspired ones. Romanesque marble-and-echo ones. Mosaic bellystone ones. YMCA gymnasium ones. Hippies-on-the-beach ones. Forest retreat picture-window ones. Strip-mall imported-salt-chunk-and-plastic-seahorse ones. Sanitarium scrub-down ones. I am radically pro-bathhouse. I want more in the world.

I want you to know this, so you know where I'm coming from, when I talk about what I've been doing. I read through guidebooks and travel forums, and people are reviewing bathhouses like the opening of a new fast-food chain. I've been to bathhouses that weren't my style, and bathhouses that didn't function, but I don't believe in bad bathhouses. I'm not looking for perfect. I'm not looking for fancy. I'm not even looking for effortless. I don't mind a bathhouse that takes me an hour to find, that's older than I am, whose traditions I have to learn, whose cleaning crews aren't compulsive. I've got reams of theories about bathing and enjoying life, about health and happiness and the right to both. I want bathhouses that make people happy. I'm looking for living, vital bathhouses that are loved by their patrons, cared for by their owners, and are improving people's lives. I believe in bathhouses that work. I believe in lots and lots of bathing experiences.

And the bathing experience we're discussing right now is saunas. Because this is Scandinavia, full-on Finland, where they made up the word Sauna. So, our language is sweat and stove and stone and wood and fire and steam. For the rest of the chapter, we are all sizzle and bench and endorphin rushes and this beautiful idea of löyly (which is a word I can't pronounce, and neither can you, but I like to read it, and to hear Finnish people describe it as near-sentient steam, the soul of the sauna.)

Oh, and a word about temperature. I'm using Celsius as my sauna-heat measure, because it underscores for me the whole complete and unique tactile environment in the stove room. (I can't hear “110 degrees Fahrenheit” without thinking of that vacation in Texas, or my childhood summer egg-experiments. Too prone to hyperbole. Even (hitherto) imaginary temperatures like 180.) Celsius gives sauna heat it's own authority. So, let's just remember that 100 degrees boils water, yes? And 40 is a dangerously hot summer day.

All Kinds Of Ready!

I have a mission today! A bright, golden glowing mission that will, can only, result in lovely sighs and victory! I've got a fancy new wooly hat, and a scratchy new mitt, and you know what that means? Today I sauna!

Sauna Aitta -- Helsinki's only all-sauna, all-the-time accoutrement store!

I'm On A Boat!

I have slept in some truly sketchy places in my life (dubiously stained motel rooms with recently kicked-in door jams, mosquito-net-for-walls huts 100 yards uphill from alligator mating grounds) but last night's bunk may be the most conceptually frightening so far. I slept on the ferry to Helsinki, across the Bothnian Bay. I slept in cabin 2023, on level 2. That's at the bottom of the ferry, just above the deep-freeze food storage. So it's below the 5 people decks crammed with captains and cabins and casinos and karaoke bars and cafes. And it's right below the automobile deck, because this is a big ferry. In fact, now that I think of it, it's probably below the waterline.

The cabin was tiny, barely big enough to see carpet when the bunks folded down. There's no windows on that level, just a cute porthole-shaped photo of a lighthouse taken somewhere made of equal parts perfect fluffy clouds and minnow-calm water. But it was scrupulously clean, and had its own bathroom and hot shower. Which is saying something, given that there are only about 6 public restrooms for all the public areas of the ferry.

I'd recommend it to anyone! It's like a snug little womb room, where nothing but sleep lives. The weird rocking and rumbling of engines pulling weight over waves is kinesthetic white noise. If you've ever enjoyed falling asleep in the backseat of a car, summer evening wrapped all around you; you'll love it. Yellowing plastic light switches glow like distant dashboard lights, and the hiss of air conditioning is like radio static, the warm air barely moving. Every mutter of of foreign language passing by in the halls is like the murmur of adults in the front seats, driving home from a day in the sun. I haven't slept so well in weeks.

[My favorite Swedish word right now is Ochså, Also. (Say it oak-so, with the first syllable in the back of your throat.)  Och (said with so slight a k-sound that it's almost oh -- no Engineering Officer impressions, please) is And; I love the relationship!]

Learning to Fisk

Today ended much as it began; with herring. Ended with my first personal flirtation with preparing the fresh fish – a strong-smelling but delightful tryst, deliciously endowed with liberal amounts of hot butter and garlic. Began more timidly – those of you who like adventure food will agree – with a twist in flavor on the much-loved pickled fish. (There are no less than 5 flavors of pickled herring at the bodega-grocery the train station; at the full-scale one in the middle of town, I stopped counting at 8. The jars further down the shelf had begun to include mussels, shrimps and other sea-bits, and I could no longer in good conscience categorize them as herrings.) Though mustard, and lemon, look like nice flavorscapes to accompany the fish, I started my Swedish pickled herring perusal with dill. Dill is ubiquitous here, tucked into all kinds of sauces and salady things and herb mixes. (I'd even be willing to insist I've seen sprigs in some floral arrangements, if you need a good anecdote.) In fact, if you're going to have a seasoned foodstuff here, I've been assured it would be safe to bet it will be seasoned with dill. Or the occasional juniper berry.

Much of the spice-box I suspended between wooly pants and wooly sweaters on the flight over was designed to outweigh this whole dill-obsession. Heavy on the dried peppers (ancho, chipotle, cayenne and aleppo), but also on a couple of mixes that simply cannot be easily swayed to the Forces of Sweet. Because dill most certainly can. Yep, sweet pickled herring is what I ate this morning, and as much as I enjoy pickled herring –and flaunting the sweet-breakfast convention in general – it was kind of weird.

In between herrings, then, was a super mundane day of travel-city-logistics: learning how the public transportation card is filled with money (equaling more rides), acquiring a Hosteling International membership (equaling more beds), and finding an easy-to-read and cheap wrist watch (equaling, counterintuitively, a little less free time). The sum total of the day: increased fish quotient in my belly, and Increased Preparedness for Traveling.

Tomorrow, its back to oogling the magic of narrow, colorful cities pushing their ways up through the rocky floors mossy forests – we're going to Uppsala (say it Oop-sala)!

The word of the day is Herring: Sill (seel). And sillar (seel-ahr, that's more than one herring) are a kind of fisk. 

This Couch is Mysig

I honestly cannot recommend an east-to-west, 7-timezone airplane ride to anyone, but 32 hours after the fact, I'm doing pretty well. The first 10 hours were tricky, jetlag has gotten more sophisticated since I last tasted it. I kept getting second winds, feeling fine, looking forward to life, and starting out on adventures. Invariably, I got halfway (just inside the grocery door, to the apex of a loop around the neighborhood, up off the couch for a glass of water) suddenly was quite convinced someone was slowly but confidently pulling the linoleum/asphalt/ubiquitous birch floor paneling out from under my feet. Loss of balance was quickly ganged up upon by the sensation of being pressed by about 60 pounds of wet sand. I felt cold, and flush, and very very stupid. I'd persevere in a half-conscious sort of way, accomplish X goal without any feeling of victory, and slump back gratefully in stasis … only to get another second wind 15 minutes later. I made it til 9 before I lost consciousness and feel very very lucky that I could still say words by then.

Today, though, waking up was easy, and besides a total lack of attention span, I feel happy and normal. We walked through Stockholm, mostly the oldest island Gamal Stan, where the streets are two-wingspans wide, orthotically cobblestoned, and decorated with many antique and tasteful-tourist shops. It was a look-but-don't-touch day, a get-lost-on-purpose day, a oh-my-there's-skulls-under-that-dragon-statue day. I could hardly see the architecture for the bricks, and look forward to visiting again when peering into every window isn't so all my brain will allow. There's a gaming store (a big one with fantasy novels, comics and all kinds of geekphenalia) in which I'd love to spend an afternoon. It has a shingle hanging above the door with a painting of a dragon fighting a rocketship. Yay!

The city didn't smell like much besides cold, wet stone and the occasional municipal construction site. The buses smell like Sharpies. But outside boutiques and flower shops, on the little stone sidewalks in front of bakeries and offices, little fires were burning. Some were tea lights in colored glass jars, some were tiny campfires in little iron cages, all merry and flickering. These are mysig (say it mee-sig, with your tongue against your front teeth, the cuter you slur the better, and its an adjective), a sweet little assurance that the place within is Cozy. Friendly, nice, snug, sitting-with-friends-by-the-fire-with-a-mug-of-glogg cozy. Sweden is just about the cutest.

Now it is dark (has been since 4), just above freezing, and we've finished a dinner of corn chips (a brittle, super-finely-ground-corn local brand), home-refried black beans (they came canned in a box!) and fresh salsa made as spicy hot as we could handle. Somewhere winding through the neighborhood I can hear the chiming of an ice-cream truck.

My vocabulary is growing, mostly thanks to Engelsk Bildordbok (a Swedish-to-English dictionary done completely in pictures – nouns are awesome!):

Svamp is your singular Mushroom (more than one would be svampar)

Ren is Reindeer

Dogs say “Bow!”

And the word for Uterus is Livmoder

Two Days To Go!

My bags are packed and my storage unit is full! I've done all the adult things I could think of to transform myself from a stationary community member into a mobile citizen. In the last weeks I've hugged just about everyone I know in town, and walked through all my haunts. 3 months is almost no time at all, but somehow this time I feel  the stretch of miles. All my brittle nerves settled into a smooth rising crescendo of excitement at the beginning of the week, and I've found myself easily falling into that panoramic soft-field-of-vision where I see with my heart as much as my eyes.

With the promise of "Only salt and pepper, maybe dill," as my seasoning landscape ahead, I am soaking in as many flavors as possible to keep my tongue warm for the winter. In preparation, I've kept up a brisk schedule of revisiting every single spicy favorite food and restaurant I love here. Because, really, thats a seasoning promise? Threat. Challenge! I'm travelling with a box of spices that takes up a 6th of my suitcase, and I am fully prepared to wrestle any Swedish ingredient into deliciosity!