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.
