Thermae #2: Friedrichsbad

As soon as I began planning this adventure, Friedrichsbad stood out as the pinnacle of my pilgrimage. Actually, it inspired the notion of this being a pilgrimage, rather than 'just' a theme-vacation or business-plan-inspiring-research. Someone out there still calling their bathhouse a Bathing Temple. I have visited many lovely bathhouses, and sat in many powerful places of worship. I didn't know if anywhere in our modern world would truly be able to merge the two, but I knew I needed to be there.

As you've probably heard me enthuse, a supplicant to the Bathing Temple follows 17 steps of ablution and relaxation, for a total of 4 ritual hours, including the attentions of 3 varieties of masseuse. Upon leaving, one is guaranteed not only to win any contest of cleanliness, but also to be at least 1 fathom closer to enlightenment. According to autogenic legend, one's skin will take on a pearlescent sheen, one's gaze will remain clear and softly focused for 72 hours, and one's feet will not actually touch firmament for at least 24. All of this is true.

The ceremony unfolds thusly:

Step 1. Shower. (3min) (And right from the get-go, allow me to assure you that ALL the water, beginning with the showers and including the bubblers, flows from the famed local healing mineral springs.)

Step 2. Warm-air Bath. (54 ° C, 15min) Every surface in this room glows with gentle convection warmth, from the floors to the wooden lounge chairs.

Step 3. Hot-air Bath. (68 °, 5min) From a glow to a steady toast in a smaller oven.

Step 4. Shower. (1min)

Step 5. Soap and Brush Massages. (8min) Taken in turn, the vigorous soft bristles and creamy soap bubbles shed the last bits of whatever you were doing before you entered Friedrichsbad.

Step 6. Shower. (1min)

Step 7. Thermal Steam Bath. (45 °, 10 min) In a marble filled with clouds of soft mineral-scented steam, a square pyramid of steps faces two golden hives of calcinated fountains rolling with raw hotspring.

Step 8. Thermal Steam Bath. (69 °, 5 min) On the top step of the marble pyramid, closer to the sweet heat.

Step 9. Thermal Full Bath. (36 °, 10min) A long cool pool to stretch warmed muscles and open skin.

Step 10. Thermal Whirlpool Bath. (34 °, 15min) Smaller, bubblier, cooler, a massage by tiny naiads.

Step 11. Thermal Kinotherapeutic Bath. (28 °, 5min) At the center of the bath, like a crown glowing 17 meters above the pool, is a golden frescoed dome that draws your eyes up marble columns and gilded alcoves, tucking the last of your words away, while you float in mineral broth.

Step 12. Shower. (3min)

Step 13. Cold-water Bath. (18 °) A quick (breath-stealingly quick) submersion in cold (breath-stealingly cold) water. Toes numb and skin very awake after.

(Clever mathematicians will have noticed that this does not yet fill the quota of devotional hours. At this point, the supplicant is allowed, in a near-sleeping-kitten-like quiecience, to roam freely through the Temple revisiting her favorite rooms at leisure for several REM cycles.)

Step 14. Drying Off. (with warm towels). (4min) Bed-sheet-sized warmed towels.

Step 15. Application of Moisturizing Cream. (8min) Expertly applied in handfuls til you are evenly frosted with a dense fragrant cream; it's not meant to soak in yet.

Step 16. Resting Room. (30min) In which you are rolled into warm blankets and tucked into one of maybe 3 dozen beds filling a huge, dim, rose-colored dome of a room, to nap.

Step 17. Reading Room (30min) In which the lounging continues in a more sentient vein, with time to more fully comprehend the miles one's life has just traveled towards true happiness, and have tea.

I will admit; I remember the practicals, but after step 5, my sense of analytical self, and a goodly portion of my vocabulary, washed down the drain with the suds. (They were good practicals, though: soft cotton sheets to wind in while lounging and traversing, traded for clean sitting pads before the steam room; a dozen pairs of bath sandals in different sizes, and disinfectant-dunk, before the hot rooms; clocks without numbers to help you keep the time without worrying you about time...) The further I wandered into the bathing temple, the deeper I sank into pure corporeal awareness, and solid visceral bliss. The light was always muted and murmuring, the air a burned-velvet pattern of steam and refraction. Every room was decorated with unique painted tiles and mosaics of art nouveau flora, aquatic fauna, or abstract color. The giggle of falling, splashing, running water echoed everywhere. The air never warm and never still, the other bathers never close or stiff, and the staff singularly kind and cognizant of the beautiful healing collapse prompted by the place.

There is a Mark Twain quote cited in every single description anywhere of Baden-Baden's historic Irish-Roman Bathing Temple, and I would probably have my travelog licence revoked if I didn't repeat it for you here, “At Friedrichsbad, you lose track of time within 10 minutes and track of the world within 20…” And as much as I hate to ride even the wittiest of coattails, I agree – if you are someone who pays a lot of attention to your watch, I expect Friedrichsbad is very much like that. For me, though, I'll say Friedrichsbad glows at the sunny crossroads between the Brigadoon of my bones and the Oz of my bliss, and leave it at that.

Friedrichsbad: Historic Bathing Temple 

So Bath They Named It Twice

Baden-Baden is built on magic, has celebrated several millenia of birthdays spinning, winding and handing out this magic, and is completely conscious of it. You can be sure, though I have found no mention in our post-Imperial literature, that people of all fur, feathers, and feet have been bathing in the springs of this valley since the beginning of the world. It's too beautiful, too protected, altogether too perfect to have not threaded its magic into all organic history. The Romans made it official with stone, however, and Baden-Baden has been in the business of bathing ever since. I wandered over some of its 54 sq. miles of Black Forest river valley, through falling snows and along the river Oos, in a kind of steamy trance. An Entire City Devoted to Bathing.  

And casinos. 

But who cares about casinos?

I don't know if I've ever shared this with you, but I'm a sucker for bathhouse t-shirts. I don't really understand it either, and it's not like most bathhouses sell t-shirts (but the ones that do are awesome!) It might be some bath-geek equivalent of sport team support. Or maybe it's just poorly translated enthusiasm. I don't usually wear clothes with logos, or words. I don't often wear band t-shirts. They make me feel shy and unprepared for coolness. But somehow I'm totally charmed by the thought of someone designing a t-shirt to talk up a place filled with hot water and naked people. I think it's fabulous. And wearing them makes me feel like an underground superhero.

So I keep my eye out for bathhouse paraphernalia. And on my last day in Baden-Baden I found myself in a situation I had never encountered before – desirous of a "I ♥ Baden-Baden" t-shirt. You know exactly the one I'm thinking of, it's the same shirt hanging in every eye-rollingly touristy souvenir shop on the planet. (My only defense is that I do have an awful lot of enthusiasm, even if it is poorly translated.) I looked high and low, everywhere from the shops where they sell postcards to the train station newsstand to the Christmas market to the supermarket. I found silver-plated Baden-Baden spoons, and enamel-painted Baden-Baden plates, and even swarovski-crystal-bedazzled Baden-Baden totebags. After going through a dozen bewildered shopkeepers in a dozen different shops, I am forced to concede that Baden-Baden, city of historically relevant baths and big old money, is simply not mundane enough to make tacky tourist t-shirts. 

And, for the life of me, I don't know whether to be annoyed or relieved.