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