Our Sauna experiences

©hotel-vinea.com

When you think of Finland the first thing that comes to mind is “sauna”. Ok, maybe the second, the first being “cold winter”. As you might already be aware, Finns are very fond of saunas. In Finland, there is 1 sauna for every 2 persons.

This obviously meant that we had to try it. I personally have been to a sauna only once before, during a trip with my brother. It was near a lake, which felt quite cold when you jump into it coming from a hot sauna. Nicolas and Romain have never tried it before.

Our first experience here was with snow. We went to the sauna, got it pretty hot and then ran as fast as we could to the nearest pile of (somewhat) clean snow and jumped into it. Then we proceeded to run even faster back to the warm air of the sauna. It wasn’t as bad as you might think. The hardest part is your bare feet on the cold ground, or even worse, cement of the stairs we had to climb. So, if you’re sensitive, I would suggest bringing a pair of flipflops with you. Otherwise, you don’t really feel the cold. What you do feel though, is the snow. When we did it, it was quite hard, you felt the crystals on your skin. Nothing unbearable though, and all around enjoyable.

Our next remarkable sauna adventure was in Tampere. There we went to the public sauna to take it to the next level. See, this sauna was built next to the lake, and for one particular reason. When we got there, the lake was frozen, we even walked on it!

©@jayandrob on flickr

And when you get out of the sauna, you can walk about 20 meters to a hole in the ice where you can get in the freezing cold water. It was really cool (hehe, get it?). The hardest part, again, was on the feet. What’s interesting too, is that afterward you could stay outside for 10+ minutes and you wouldn’t even feel cold!

© Daniel Frolov

Finally, while in Lapland, I experienced the sauna the true Finnish way: naked. Nothing special here, except maybe the shouts of our neighbours when they saw us barge out to run to the snow (again) with me in my birthday suit.

The only thing left is to try it with a “vihta” or “venik”. It is made of birch branches to massage and stimulate the skin!

These were not the only times we went to the sauna, but they were the most iconic and memorable!

-Daniel