Study Abroad Stories

A Russian Bathhouse Story

STINA SKEWES-COX, University of California, Irvine

I unbutton my shirt, and let my bare breasts join the sea of the others in the room. I turn to wrap a towel around me, and then decide not to. There are about forty of us, all women, all naked. As casually as I can, I saunter into the room, and quickly close the door. An eighty year old woman looks at me, says something I can’t understand, and begins to beat me with a bouquet of chamomile, lavender, and peppermint. She points to my dry, native Californian skin, having just suffered through its first ever winter, and begins to hit harder.

After hitting my entire naked body, she hands me the bushel, and motions for me to reciprocate. Her skin hangs in places I didn’t know could sag, her hair is damp from the moisture, and she closes her eyes in relaxation. I see a scar below her belly button; a reminder of a baby long ago born. Without smiling, I can still see a deep crease where her dimple has burrowed into the skin from decades of felicitous moments. By now, I should be fairly uncomfortable, but as I look around the room at the senior citizens, and then at my fellow DIS students, our young twenty year old bodies looking barely lived in by comparison, I start to relax.

I am at a Russian bathhouse in St. Petersburg, and have paid 25 rubles, a little less than one American dollar, to enjoy the sauna and showers with other Russian women for one hour. Mostly older women hustle and bustle around the bath room like busy worker bees, checking the temperature of the showers, exfoliating their bodies with a mud scrub, and assembling the bushels of herbs to beat into our skin, which are said to cure colds, help with circulation, and moisturize the skin.

You start by entering the sauna room, which is set at around 110 degrees Fahrenheit. After staying as long as you possibly can, you run out, and pour a huge bucket of ice cold water over your head. The shock of it makes you cry out, but somehow the surprise of the cold that hits your body hurts in a manner unlike pain. You then go back into the steaming room, and start all over. When you leave, you feel wide awake, vividly aware, and with glowing skin.

Entering a Russian Bath House is not too far away from the feeling one gets when moving to a foreign land. You are naked, exposed, and without your usual cover or comforts. You are showing parts of yourself usually reserved for a certain few in your life. You might look different from others around you; different skin, different scars, different pasts. Taking off all of your clothes in front of strangers is only bearable because they are doing it, too. First arriving at DIS, you are without your group of friends and family, and far away from your support group, but everyone else is, as well.

You wonder if some will not be able to stand the temperature, and leave before the heat rises. But like the bathhouse, if you stand the heat, and give yourself the shock of the cold water, the uncomfortable moments melt away, and in hindsight, you can only recall the positive outcome. It is easy to stand at the cooler part of the room, let the steam stand around you, but not envelope you, much like remaining staunchly ethnocentric in a new land. You can easily wash off in warm water, but by pushing yourself into the extremes, you can discover your limits.

Living in a foreign country forces you to decide whether or not to stay within your comfort zone, or to take that chance, pour that cold water over your head, and laugh at the (culture) shock, not because it makes you feel so different, but because it makes you feel so wonderful.