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Beating the Blahs – in a Banya By Pam Fitch Published in the Body Politic, Vol.3, 3, p.9-10, June 2005 Four years ago, my husband Carryl and I traveled back to Canada from our 2 year stint in Asia via the Trans-Siberian Express. The Trans-Siberian, as it is known by travelers all over the world, links eastern Russian and China with Mongolia, and Eastern Europe. Its final western destination is Moscow. It was trip like no other and I shall never forget it. We left Beijing on a sunny July morning and stared for hours at the Great Wall as it wends into and around the Gobi Desert. The sight of so much space and sky after the confines of Hong Kong felt like food to 2 Canadians longing for home. But the Gobi looks like nothing I’ve seen in Canada – its brick yellow sand a brilliant contrast to cloudy summer skies. Water is at a premium in the desert and we could appreciate how little there was when we stopped in Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia. It’s dry and dusty streets and old Soviet style buildings seemed a tired contrast to the rich expanses of the desert. We enjoyed Mongolian hospitality in a ger and were given (and drank!) mare’s milk vodka – a delicacy not soon to be forgotten… We watched camels meandering through the Gobi dunes and caught sight of an occasional Mongolian horseman riding across the horizon. The recent film, The Story of the Weeping Camel, which is set in Mongolia, brought back many memories from our trip. And so it seemed a surprising contrast once we had crossed the border into Siberia. Desert gave way to the great Russian Steppes, rolling hills of green meadow and Russian Birch that could easily pass for Eastern Ontario. On the morning of the 5th day of Trans Siberian journey, we arrived on the shores of Lake Baikal, the largest fresh water lake in the world at 636 km long, and the Lake is over 1 ½ km. deep. Water and trees are to Siberia what the Gobi was to Mongolia and we suddenly felt like we were in familiar territory, despite a slightly different and older architecture. Nestled on the shores of the great Lake Baikal, was a tiny village called Listvyanka, population under 1000. We spent 2 nights here in a homestay hosted by a lovely woman named Olga. She cooked us omal (a delicious freshwater fish that tastes like mackerel) and made us the best borscht I have ever eaten – some beets, but also rich with potato, broth and dillweed. The food and the hospitality were as good as could be imagined - but the highlight of our stay was an opportunity to use Olga’s banya. Siberian Banya Traditions Every Russian home in the country has a banya because the Russian people firmly believe in the powerful health benefits of sweating. While we were out exploring the village, our hostess and her daughter took a big tin bathtub down to the lake and filled it with water. They carried the tub back to the banya and placed it on the floor beside the bench. The average lake temperature is 4 degrees C so even though they lit a fire in the old wood stove, the tub of water remained as cold as…well… ice. When we returned from our rainy walk around the village, Olga invited to use the banya. Most banyas are constructed like Finnish Saunas. Massage therapists from Thunder Bay would recognize the Russian banya traditions because Saunas are very popular at the cottages along the shores of Lake Superior. There is a small outer chamber where you leave your clothes and an inner room for sweating. We doffed our wet clothes and hurried into the inner chamber, almost gasping with the heat. The stove was piping hot and after our walk in the rain, a sudden contrast to the cold. A swatch of birch branches lay on the bench and we were instructed to beat ourselves with the birch leaves in order to improve circulation. If we wanted more steam to induce sweating, we were told to take some water from the tub and throw it on a container of rocks. Russians normally bathe and wash their clothes at the same time in the banya and our homestay provided a wonderful opportunity to do our laundry mid trip. After 5 days on the Trans-Siberian, this was a welcome chance! This July day was cold and wet and the banya heat a blessing but we could only just imagine what it must be like at -35 in the winter. You’d probably never want to leave! After about 10 minutes, I felt almost woozy and had to throw ladles of cold water over my body to cool. Beating myself with a birch switch took more energy than I could muster so the flagellating was decidedly half-hearted. When we had washed and hung all our clothes and decided that we could take no more heat, we slowly dressed and wobbled over to our guest house. I remember little of what happened the rest of the evening – truthfully - after the banya, it was all a blur. QUOTE: "Give me a fever and I can cure any disease." Hippocrates The next morning we boarded the train again, this time bound for Moscow – although Moscow was 3 days away. Travel distances these days are often counted in hours, since so many people fly. But when you are on a train, one of the challenges is simply to calculate where you are on a map. To our great surprise, after a day and a half, we passed into Europe unceremoniously when we sited a monument beside the train tracks that simply said “Europe” on one side and “Asia” on the other. The Russian Bath Moscow is an astonishing contrast to the verdant villages and towns of Siberia. Founded in 1147, the city of 10 million sprawls across a large plain in Western Russia and contains architecture from every century since it began. Culture and art are enormously important to the Russian people and even the underground transit system boasts astonishing displays of mosaic, sculpture, architectural masterpieces and painting. One could easily stay in Moscow for a month and never see all that there is to see. Even the Kremlin – a medieval castle in the heart of the city, could take days to assimilate. Normally the only pictures of Moscow that Canadians see are views of Red Square – about the size of 2 football fields and surrounded with stunning architectural treasures; and St. Basil’s Cathedral – the colourful and multi-domed church at one end of Red Square. But if you wander past the GUM, the biggest department store in Russia, past the Metropolitan Hotel, an art deco treasure, and past the gorgeous Bolshoi Theatre, with its apocalyptic four horsemen in full gallop above the front entrance, you will soon wander into an old part of Moscow where the REAL Russians live … and bathe. After some searching one hot afternoon, we finally discovered the door to the local Russian Baths. It is quite common in Asia and parts of Europe for city dwellers not to have their own bathing facilities in their apartments – this is a western concept most common in North America. We were anxious to experience a Russian Bath and delighted to discover its entrance. Men and women bathed separately in this institution, although this is not always the norm. I entered the ladies entrance and was immediately greeted by the only person that I could see who was wearing any clothes. A tall woman (all women seem tall in Moscow) smiled, spoke no English but seemed to understand what I wanted. She gave me a key to a locker where I placed my valuables and then I was directed to a bench with a hook for my clothes. As I slowly disrobed, I watched the other women of all sizes who rested, read magazines or, in one alarming case – made tea in the nude…a new and dangerous rival to that other domestic danger – ironing in the nude. The tall woman invited me to go into another enormous marble room where I found showers lining each wall. More women moved about, oblivious to my neophyte bathing status. Some brushed their skin with natural bristle brushes – just like in hydrotherapy class. Others trimmed their nails, shampooed their hair or applied moisturizers. I watched one stout lady (also wearing clothes – she must have worked there) stoking a firebox and I figured the door beside her was the entrance to the banya. I showered and entered the banya – thinking it would be the same size as Olga’s and was astonished to discover that it was a two level, 25 ft square room, the ceiling as high as the room was square. It was filled with women whipping themselves with birch switches. Some of them wore strange felt hats pulled down over their eyes. The heat was overwhelming and I couldn’t stand it for more than 5 minutes. I felt it most on my scalp as if my head was on fire. I stumbled from the banya in search of cold and decided to jump into a plunge pool to my right that was about 8 feet square and about 5 feet deep. Exquisite. As if I had jumped into a lake of peppermint oil, my skin tingled and my vision sharpened on impact. My head immediately cooled. I had to experience the sudden cold again – it was superb.

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