Welcome to Gerschnialp.
We're currently surrounded by the stunning mountains,
green grass, and the gentle sound of cowbells.
So where better to go and bathe
in a bathtub full of cheese product?
Traditional Swiss dairy Alpkäserei Gerschnialp
produces 35 tons of cheese a year
using cow and goat's milk from nearby dairies.
During the cheese-making process,
curds are separated from whey, which is usually discarded.
Records of bathing in whey go back to the 1800s
in Switzerland, as visitors believed
it had restorative properties.
It's now a niche activity.
Local producer Sälmi Töngi offers the whey baths
as an add-on to a tour of his cheese production.
It costs 40 Swiss francs for one person, around $40.
Today, I'll be testing three things.
One, how good it is for my skin,
two, how relaxing the experience is,
and three, whether or not I come out smelling like cheese.
Time to put my own bath to the test.
Uh, gracefully.
(laughs)
(gasps)
It's really warm.
Ah, that's so good.
First of all, you would expect this
to smell extremely cheesy, and it just doesn't.
It smells like a very sweet, nutty milk.
Another thing is the texture.
I know that it's something about bathing in milk
is that it's supposed to make your skin soft,
and this just feels like slipping inside of a velvet glove.
It's the most soft, milky bath.
It doesn't smell like cheese.
And it wouldn't.
The cheesy smell actually comes
from added bacteria that make up starter culture,
which needs time to develop.
It also comes from washing the rind with brine.
The dairy uses traditional methods to turn local milk
into four different types of cheese.
Sälmi cuts the curds by hand.
That means a lot of leftover whey.
So, what was our verdict on the treatment?
So, we were in the dairy for a couple of hours earlier
watching the production,
and it's really satisfying to see that the waste product,
which would normally come out
of the production of the curds,
is being used here.
I can feel that my skin is a lot softer at the end of this,
mainly on my hands and feet, and it's not sticky.
So, what about the cheese smell?
On a level of one being a mild, inoffensive mozzarella
to 10 being a fully ripe brie that you left
at the back of your fridge, I'm about a level two.
Charlie, who's behind the camera,
said that it was actually quite a pleasant smell,
but it's because I managed to have a shower
and I washed off a lot of the residue.
My swimming costume, on the other hand,
this is, I would say, about an eight or a nine right now.
This is purely because the whey
has been warmed up in the sun
and stuck to fibers, so it's worth a good rinse afterwards.
Having washed off, feeling pretty soft,
and yeah, feeling pretty fresh.
The whole afternoon was surprisingly relaxing, though.
(cowbells ringing)
No one's waving back. (laughs)