Before moving to Germany my experience with saunas was nonexistent. I’d seen them used
in Seinfeld and Friends as set ups for naked jokes, and I’d certainly heard the rumors
about how popular they were in other parts of the world, but I’d never partaken.
But now, all that’s changed.
Dana here, and you're watching Wanted an Adventure Living Abroad.
The sauna culture varies widely throughout the world, with Europe in general being more
comfortable baring all within those hot demarcated zones of steamy nakedness, and America and
Canada being, well, generally less comfortable.
But even within Europe the sauna norms and etiquette definitely do vary
from country to country.
In my mind, Finland is like the headquarters of the saunas. In Finland there are public saunas,
private home saunas, corporate saunas. There’s even a sauna at the Parliament House.
So many saunas that according to Statistics Finland, the average breaks down to 1 sauna
per every household. That’s a heck of a lot of saunas! But in Finland saunas aren't
seen as luxury items, so much as they're necessities.
According to VisitFinland.com, saunas are an integral part of the Finnish culture, and
apparently, if they go too long without a sauna, they’ll start feeling incomplete.
I know what that’s like. Too long without baby back ribs and I start to lose my mind.
What? Not the same thing?
Saunas in Germany aren't really taken as seriously as they are in Finland, nor are they as pervasive.
In Germany, some people sauna and some people don’t. I’ve gotten the sense that saunaing
in Germany is kind of like mayonnaise--people either love it or they hate it.
When I was in Finland, the sauna that I visited was single-sex, but while doing my research
for this video I learned that it actually varies from not only sauna to sauna but also
circumstance to circumstance. I found the best explanation for this on the Wikipedia
page, actually, where it explains that, well, sometimes men and women go to the sauna together,
but sometimes they don't. For a person brought up in Finland, the rules are, apparently,
instinctive but difficult to put into words. The article goes on to explain that the age
structure of the group as much as the relationships of the people in it can lead to 3 different
options for saunaing. First is that everyone can just go to the sauna together, men and
women. The second is that the men and the women could sauna separately. Or the third
option is that each family unit could sauna together but separate from the other families.
But even though it's totally normal for Finnish families to sauna naked together, it is common
for teenagers at some point to stop going to the sauna with their parents.
In Germany, however, things are a lot more straightforward. Occasionally, at a gym or
a swimming pool, there will be a single-sex sauna within the separate locker rooms, but
most of the time it’s all the masses all together.
In Germany there are also these stand alone thermal water worlds as they’re best translated
from German into English. And at these places you have 2 sections: a bathing suit required
section and a bathing suit verboten section. The required section is kind of like an indoor
water park. Here's where you’ll find the kids, the families, and even some water slides!
But don’t get too comfy over there thinking that you could just go into the bathing suit
section to avoid the naked people because there’s only 1 dressing room for everyone,
anyway. One dressing room. For everyone. Men, women, kids, 1 dressing room. And the only
way to get out to either section is through that 1 dressing room.
But at the saunas, naked and sweaty as everyone is, it is certainly not a sexual environment.
First of all, it’s usually so freaking hot that you try not to touch your own skin let
alone have someone else touching you. It’s so hot that you have to remove necklaces before
going in or else they start to burn you halfway through. Plus, that’s just not the culture
of the environment. There’s a well-known Finnish saying that says, you should behave
in a sauna as you would in church. Let that sink in for a moment. Okay.
As far as my German saunscapades go--did you see what I did there? Saunscapades--you liked
that, didn't you?
As I mentioned at the beginning of this video, I have in fact become a partaker and even
a lover of the German sauna. But not a lover of mayonnaise. Yuck, ew. During my first few
sauna visits, though, I certainly experienced my fair share of awkward encounters.
Almost hard not to when you’re trying to get used to waltzing around a water park naked, right?
For my very first time, Mr. German Man and I visited the bathing suit required side first,
but then before going over to the other side, I ran back into the changing room just to
grab something from my locker. But on the way out…wait, really? You really think I'm
just going to give away these intimate stories that easily? Ha.
Of course I’d love nothing more than to divulge my awkward naked sauna stories to
the world, but not without a little incentive. So here’s my promise. This channel currently
has a little more than 200 subscribers. When it hits 1000,
I’ll share all my sauna stories with you.
So tweet, share, post, like, plus one or even tell your friends in person, and part II of
this video will be here soon.
Links to everything that I talked about below. Also let me know in the comments if you’ve
ever been to a sauna, naked or otherwise, and what you thought of it.
Don’t forget to subscribe and until next time...today I’m going to try it in Finnish
because I talked about Finland, so Finnish people, I’m really sorry if I say this wrong.
Until next time, näkemiin