Monday, March 17, 2008

The Bania

One nice way of passing the long and cold winter nights is to go to the Bania, the russian equivalent of sauna, picnic and sado masochist boot camp all at once. The concept is simple: you rent a small 2-story house, with the ground floor being the oven and the second floor being the 3-room sauna, where you can bring your drinks and food. For 2 to 3 hours, you go from overheated room to not so overheated room, pouring some over cold water over your body from time to time and whipping your friends with the branches of a miraculous tree which have an exfoliating effect. Where is the fun part in this? Well, it is still better than being cold outside with a skin that has not been exfoliated I guess.


Behind the awesome cars, you can see the wooden house with the host, whose role is to make sure that it is really hot in there. On the right, this is the not so hot room with the branches on the bench.

The 2nd hottest room in the house with more branches and a bucket of really cold water. On the right, that's me, ready to be exfoliated for the 4th time that night.
Posted by Picasa

4 comments:

Nikki said...

I'm beginning to see a pattern to your blog.....you should rename it "Pictures of Bruce in his underpants"

Anonymous said...

At least with these pictures, we can note you are staying fit...

Ian said...

Hmm, let me guess, is there vodka drinking involved in this game of cooking yourself while getting whipped with tree branches?

Bruce Lenorf said...

Nikki: what makes you think these are MY underpants?

Anonymous: please send me pictures of you in underpants so I see if you are getting fat.

Ian: If in my blog post I don't explicitly mention that there is no vodka involved, then consider that by default, there is/was vodka.