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"
