MOSCOW (dpa) – Two dozen naked men groaning and flinching as they are fanned with steam and beaten with birch branches may not sound like the key to fitness, spirituality and inner calm.
But the time-honoured ritual of the Russian banya, or steam bath, carries with it much of the essence of the mysterious Russian soul and secrets of maintaining one’s physical well-being.
Every week, hundreds of thousands of men and women, rich and poor, retreat from their troubles into the swirling steam of banyas across the land, from echoing marble-columned bathhouses in Moscow to pine huts on remote country allotments where there is little more than a barrel of cold water to rinse off in afterwards.
“Civilization is far away, you’re in your little banya, the birch branches are flailing, the steam is belching out – it’s a pure song of joy,” says Alexander, a researcher at a Moscow office who drives five hours to his dacha cottage in order to escape the rate race.
At the popular Astrakhanskiye baths in the capital, the halls of the male side – public banyas are usually segregated – hum with life as hundreds of visitors pay 120 roubles (4 U.S. dollars) for two hours of steam and icy plunge pool diving, and the socialising and moments of private reflection that are also part of the ritual.
Knots of men sit in changing cabins drinking green tea and locally brewed beer and discussing car repairs or business ideas. In the hall next door prays a group of Moslem Tatars from Nizhny Novgorod.
They have brought the day’s youngest visitor, blonde-haired Salamat, aged four. Venturing up steps to the hotter upper deck of the “parilka”, or steam room, he feels the rush of the moist heat and scampers laughing back to the men of the family on the lower level.
“I bring my boy to steam just as my father used to take me in the village, and from it he has an iron constitution and never gets sick,” says his father, switching into Russian from the Turkic tones of the Tatar language.
The steam room is periodically swept and aired for 15 minutes to reduce humidity, and fresh steam is then generated by ladling water often mixed with aromatic oils on red hot metal blocks in the kiln.
More oil extracts from mint, pinetree or eucalyptus are thrown on the wooden walls to evaporate and the steamers are let back in en masse.
A reverent silence falls on the room as the new steam billows – chitchat is frowned upon at this peak of the process – and the men, naked except for large felt hats (protection from temperatures of up to 120 degrees), bow their heads and sweat it.
A volunteer uses a paddle to fan gusts of scalding steam onto rows of pleasurably tormented patrons. After five minutes of groaning, recipients salute his labours with a ripple of applause and grateful “spasibos” before lashing each other with “veniki”, tied-up clumps of usually birch or oak branches.
Treatment with these and veniki of eucalyptus and prickly juniper bush stimulates the circulation, removes old skin and has a reputed mild antiseptic effect and other skin-toning benefits.
Eucalyptus oil sprinkled on the leaves also allows you to breath through the clump as a kind of inhaler to clear the sinuses.
But despite its strong traditional roots and conventions, banya culture is now big business in Russia’s decade-old market economy.
At the first ever “Banya 2001” exhibition held in Moscow in October, all aspects of the national obsession with steam were addressed, from aromatherapy to the dozens of types of honey that may be rubbed into the skin during the steaming process to sooth nerve cells and assist the cardiovascular system.
For more affluent devotees, craftsmen advertised construction of lavish fairy-tale style banya blocks made of limewood and pine and costing 500 dollars a square metre, plus an extra 1000 for the kiln.
Meanwhile, the rest of the population manages to build modest but cosy alternatives at their dachas for a couple of hundred dollars.
At another stall, a military electronics engineer turned banya builder urged visitors to “test-sit” his latest invention, the “NewRussian banya”.
In this self-contained unit slightly larger than a telephone box, a person can sit and push buttons to release the steam from a valve in the ceiling. The brochure says it gives “all the benefits of the Russian banya and thermal Roman or Turkish baths,” for 2,500 dollars.
Further on, Igor Yevdokimov from the Vladimir region by Moscow sat serenely among a selection of specially packaged veniki, mainly birch and birch mixed with juniper.
“I was led by a higher calling to start this business – I grew up with these trees and I always talk to them, ask ‘hello birches, how are you?'” he croons with a loving glance at his wares, dearly priced at over 3 dollars compared with one-dollar clumps sold at the baths.
But it’s not an exclusively Russian pursuit – foreign visitors to the country quickly fall under the banya’s spell.
“I continue to go because the banya seems to reach me in body and soul. It is like exercise in that it strengthens me, especially my internal organs, and I sweat the impurities out of my body,” said Bryon MacWilliam, an American writer who has barely skipped his weekly steam sessions in Moscow over the past four years.
“As for the soul part, conversations in the banya tend to be more sincere, the exchange more real, and people tend to be kinder, less aggressive – I am just happy.”
