Robin Goldsby.de

originally published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette

I have always been a big fan of the sauna. A good sauna can relax me, help me think through my problems, and make my skin look great. All of this for a mere 15 minutes of sweating. Not a bad deal.

Imagine my delight to be moving to Germany, a country that celebrates its mastery of the art of the sauna by rewarding its citizens with beautiful large saunas in almost every neighborhood. I was in heaven just thinking about it.

Caught up in the maze of bureaucracy and the stacks of boxes that awaited us when we arrived in Germany, I managed to forget all about anything connected to relaxation for several months. I was too busy trying to unpack theater books in English and teach my son how to say "danke" to the cheese lady at the local market. Then someone pointed out to me that just up the hill from our home was one of the prettiest saunas in the area.

I was surprised to learn that the saunas in Germany are for naked people only. Bathing suits are verboten . This made perfect sense to me. It made slightly less sense to me that the saunas were mixed, that naked men and women would be walking around together, reclining in the sauna together, and taking showers together and that no one would jump on top of anyone else.

One of the great things about moving to a foreign country is that you get a chance to discover just how brainwashed and caught up you are in your own customs and traditions. Some of these customs deserve the good press they've received over the years, and some of them are ridiculous. The trick, I think, is to keep your mind open enough to try and figure out which is which. In America, I had always worn a damp bathing suit in the sauna. Maybe naked would be better. It would certainly be physically more comfortable. With this in mind, I set off boldly for the sauna while my husband stayed home with our two year old son, who insisted on yelling at me on my way out the door, "Get NAKEY Mommy."

The first shock was the co-ed locker room. But it was empty, so I sailed right through that part of the initiation. I tucked my hang ups securely in my locker with my underwear, put on my bathrobe, and stepped through the double doors into a beautiful room with fountains, pools, and baths. I wish I could tell you that was my first observation, but it wasn't. All I could see were men. Old men. Young men. Fat and thin men. Nakey men. Water water everywhere and not a gal in sight.

I panicked. I couldn't move. My feet were stuck to a hand painted piece of ceramic tile for what seemed like a hundred years. Finally a very naked and very serious man came over to me to ask if he could be of assistance.

"Not without your shorts on you can't," I thought, as I tried not to stare.

"That would be very nice, sir," I said.

I put on my best asking for assistance at Saks face. I had vaguely recalled reading that the wet sauna, or steam room as we know it, was located outside in the garden. Desperate to be anywhere but where I was, I asked him in my caveman German to show me how to get outside. The door, of course, had been right next to me all along.

I walked through a beautiful garden full of naked men strolling around breathing in the fresh air. Germans love fresh air, even when they are naked and the temperature is hovering somewhere around forty degrees. I spotted the steam area and noticed that there was a window. I looked in and was relieved to see two females. No men. This I could handle.

Upon entering the foyer area of the steam room I attempted to decipher a long list of rules and regulations. In Germany, such lists tend to accompany virtually every activity in one's daily life. These folks are big on rules. I took off my bathrobe, yanked open the door, and entered the steam room. The two women steaming themselves acknowledged me with a hearty "Guten Morgen." In Germany, when you enter a bakery, the waiting room of the doctor's office, or a sauna full of buck-naked people, you are required by some code, the origins of which I have yet to discover, to shout out a greeting. Then you sit down and completely ignore everybody until it is time to leave, at which point you stand up, walk to the door and shout out a spirited goodbye. This custom can be particularly daunting for a foreigner. Especially a naked foreigner.

I felt relaxed with these women as I listened to them chatter in German. The toxic effects of the previous three months began to drain from my body and I began to think that this naked sauna business was really wonderful. The two women got up to leave and I observed that they turned on a hose and very meticulously sprayed off their seats for the next steam-people. What a great place, I thought.

"Aufwiedersehen," they shouted.

"Aufwiedersehen," I responded, feeling like I was starting to fit in.

I was alone in the steam room. It felt so luxurious, being naked in a huge steam room all by myself. After fifteen minutes or so, I started to feel the effects of the heat and reluctantly stood up to leave. At just that moment, the door flew open and in walked two very large men. Nakey, of course.

"Guten Morgen," they shouted enthusiastically.

All I could think of to do was to sit down . I discovered on that morning that if you cross enough body parts, you can effectively conceal your private regions. What you can not conceal, is your embarrassment. Everyone else seemed so at ease with their nakedness. I was starting to feel pretty stupid for making such a big deal out of it. But still I sat; curled into a tight little ball, sweating like a schwein, and realizing that if I didn't stand up and get out of there I would probably faint from the heat. Worse than having these two guys see me naked would be to wake up in a German emergency room somewhere with nothing on. I decided to stand up and get it over with.

Just as I was about to flee, I remembered that I was obliged to spray off the place where I had been sitting. I found the hose and turned on the faucet with what must have been a little too much force. The hose flew out of my hand and sprayed one of the men in the face with freezing cold water. Then the hose developed a life of its own and began writhing around on the floor like some sort of a deranged snake in a Stephen King movie. I had no option but to hit the floor and start crawling around on my hands and knees in an attempt to stop the hose. There is little I can think of that is more humiliating than being buck-naked on your hands and knees chasing a hose.

I can't tell you the response of the two men. I can only imagine that they were not particularly thrilled to be attacked with a fire hose by an hysterical naked woman screaming expletives in English.

Somehow I turned it off and managed to get out of there. I never did spray off my seat, and I am quite sure that I forget to say a cheerful "aufwiedersehen" as I was dragging my soaked and humiliated self out the door.

After my initiation that day, I learned to love my neighborhood sauna. I did manage to have one minor set back when I turned on the automatic "back massager" in the outdoor cold water swimming pool only to have it unleash a stream of water so powerful that it catapulted me like some sort of nude scud missile through the air to the other side of the pool in front of the folks having lunch on the terrace. By the way, when the weather is warm, many of the diners are also naked. I haven't yet mustered up the courage to do this. Somehow drinking a cup of hot coffee while topless doesn't seem like the wisest thing.

My husband recently had to master the "sauna step-over technique," a tricky procedure that involves stepping over naked bodies reclining in the sauna. Without the benefit of a bathing suit, or at the very least, underpants, this can be difficult to master while maintaining one's dignity. I have not yet participated in a "step over."

Then there is the "sauna boy." If you get lucky, the sauna boy (who is usually about 50 years old and wearing some type of loin cloth looking wrap), comes into the sauna, pours something that smells wonderful on the sauna rocks and then maniacally swings a towel over his head to circulate the aroma. One time, at a particularly fancy sauna, the sauna boy also brought in individual vials of honey. Refreshment, I thought. Wrong. We were instructed to massage the honey into our bodies. Each person did the back of his or her neighbor. To my amazement, my skin completely absorbed all of the honey. Then we were given buckets of shaved ice to pore over our heads and massage into the backs of our necks. This one almost killed me; but I survived it and felt great when the whole thing was over.

I am grateful that I was able to bypass my "American" sense of modesty long enough to discover the joys of the "European" sauna. Our son, who is now four, occasionally accompanies us to the local sauna. Every so often I catch a glimpse of him strolling around naked with all the other naked people, and I am stunned by his innocence and lack of self-consciousness. I am also stunned that I have been able to rediscover those qualities in my 39 year old self. Get nakey Mommy. Well, okay.