vailian

Last night, my girlfriend, (I call her the Ossie because she is from Ostdeutschland, or East Germany) insisted I go with her to a local swimming pool, easy walking distance from my apartment, the Agrippabad, she said it would be good for the pinched nerve in my neck. I agreed to go, thinking anything would be preferable to sitting around at home feeling sorry for myself. Even though I am not much of a swimmer, especially in swimming pools, as opposed to the ocean, and even though she wanted to combine it with a visit to the sauna, which I have no experience with.

In Germany, swimming pools will almost always have a sauna area attached; it is tradition to go swimming before having a suana and anyhow the swimming pools have discovered it to be a handy source of extra income. We paid at the entrance— the fees are charged for how long you want to be in for and whether or not you want to use the sauna rooms— and went through the turnstyle. (By the way, in Germany it is not usual to have a fitness studio attached to the sauna; this is an American custom, I think.) Then we went up to the changing room area.

I said, „ OK, I will change into my bathing suit and we will meet at the pool“ and she said, „Why? We will get changed together“ „what, you mean the changing rooms are communal?“ „Yes, of course, why not?“, she said.

And when I say communal, I mean it— rows of lockers and no chance of privacy. I am not morally offended by this, but still find it vaguely embarassing to peel off with a bunch of strangers standing around.

My Ossie is quite the other way about this, and will strip at the slightest provocation. Which she did, soon standing stark naked and impatient as I tried to find out how to work the locker system.

„And what do I do about my glasses?“ I asked her. I am quite helpless without my glasses, but on the other hand I felt that wearing nothing BUT glasses would stamp me as a pathetic voyeur. „Just leave them here, I will lead you around“, she said. Maybe there is a book on Swimming Pool Etiquette in Germany, but I have not read it.

Anyhow, clutching my towels and bathing suit, but naked, I followed her into the shower area, which WAS segregated. Seemed odd to see people going into the shower rooms naked but coming out with swimming suits on. But, evidently that is what you are supposed to do. (I noticed that many, but not all, of the people did have bathrobes on. Next time, I will take a bathrobe.)

We jumped into the swimming pool, which was very clean and well kept. And, fortunately, quite warm— I hate cold water. You can swim from the indoor pool through a kind of plastic door into the outside area, quite a delicious experience in December. It was a full moon, and despite it being December, it was not too cold. Well above freezing anyhow. Great, I thought, this is going well.

Then we swam back inside, and headed through the labyrinth to the sauna area. She said, „We will start with the Neck Sauna“. I had no idea what a Neck Sauna was, and still don’t know if that is the proper word for it. We stripped off our bathing suits and went into a little semicircular room with odd sort of alcove seats set in the walls. We sat on our towels on the seats, and a man came in and put large paper shawls over our heads, tearing holes to put our heads through, and clamping them against the sides of the alcove seats with wooden holders. So we looked like a semicircle of nuns in white habits, just heads poking through. The bath attendant said, “Twenty or thirty minutes is enough”and left. The seats were not especially comfortable: green ceramic seats, and the backrest was a kind of cage of wooden slats, and between the slats and the wall was a layer of hay or straw.

Soon there was a kind of gurgling sound with steamy interjections, and we got a blast of hay-smelling steam from the back of the seats. Very hot. I whimpered, “I am not a lobster!”, and my Ossie said, “Isn’t it wonderful? Just sit back and enjoy!” Do lobsters enjoy their time in the pot, I wondered idly. And this I was supposed to endure for a half an hour? Not wanting to offend anyone (no one else was complaining, and I didn’t want to appear a sissy) I went into my Zen mode and tried to concentrate on something else. She kept insisting that this was marvellous and didn’t it feel great, and I made sounds which wavered between noncommital and incredulous.

Somehow, and I still don’t know how, I managed to get through twenty minutes of this. Then we went towards the little pool that was part of the sauna complex. I started to put my swimming suit back on but got the most contemptuous glance from my Ossie that I realized I had committed yet another unforgiveable faux-pas.

A quartet of young people was coming towards us. I, not having my glasses, couldn’t tell what they looked like, but I tried to look nonchalant and experienced. Suddenly, one of the girls said, “Don’t we know each other?”

Now, one of the things that you do if you are nearsighted and don’t have your glasses on, is: you have to move in close. Which I did, and I am very nearsighted. I am trying to recognize this person, I could see already she was blond, but I had to get closer, to see she had nice firm breasts and so on, but then it clicked: she was a girl who had been in one of my classes about 4 years ago. “ I almost didn’t recognize you without your glasses”, she said.