Making a Spectacle of Myself in an Estonian Sauna

There are specific experiences that call to the tourist as authentically Estonian: Visit Tallinn’s Old Town; walk along the boardwalk of a bog; find mushrooms in the forest; experience buckwheat groats in every meal. And of course, stripping your clothes off to visit the sauna.

I was no stranger to saunas, having visited many countries and places—ranging from gyms to sports centers to people’s homes—which have saunas. And yet in Estonia, I found myself struggling. I quickly learned that in Estonia, it was normal and expected to have a sauna in your home. It was not normal to have a clothes dryer. I was also told very directly that it was not normal to dry your clothes in the sauna. I quickly cleared out my damp clothes and hoped that the next guest didn’t complain that it smelled of socks.

I wanted a definitive answer as to whether people would be wearing a bathing suit. When I asked, I got told that I could do whatever I preferred. I worried that this wasn’t the correct answer; they just assumed that as an American, I had a puritanical streak. Growing up in southern Germany and Los Angeles with a mother who thoroughly embraced the 1970s, I have no problem with nudity. I do, however, have an outsized fear of being inappropriately naked. All I wanted to know is what every one else will be doing.

Beyond that, most of the sauna experiences offered in Estonia seemed to be aimed at a group. “Sure, you can come on your own,” they told me at Sauna World. “70 euros an hour.” It became clear that for Estonians, sauna is a social event and if you didn’t have a social circle, then you were out of luck.

I searched for more details on the Internet, of course, and I quickly found a young American man posting about his sauna experience while renting a room from a middle-aged Estonian woman. She explained to him that he must take all of his clothes off. Once he reluctantly did so, they proceeded to make wild and passionate love in the sauna until dawn. As the story supposedly happened in summer, the season of the Estonian white nights, that didn’t seem like a spectacularly long time. There were many aspects to his story, but “likely to have happened” was not one of them.

A further issue is that I’m a relatively round person. Estonian towels are great for Estonian-shaped people, able to be wrapped all around them so thoroughly that it is impossible to know if they are wearing a bathing suit or not. If I wrap an Estonian towel around me, numerous bouncy body parts end up on full display. If I got it wrong, there was no easy retreat.

Eventually, an Estonian took pity on me and recommended that I might visit an adult sauna. The 21+ simply means that children and teenagers are not allowed, she assured me, “not the other thing”. The website was 100% clear: bathing suits are obligatory. You were not allowed to bring your own birch leaves, which was a relief as I did not have any and wouldn’t know what to do with them if I did.

I arrived to be handed a lush purple robe that brushes the floor, with thick terry cloth towels to match. It was immediately clear that most of the guests were, like me, tourists. A lavender-lit pool filled the middle of the space. A group of young men dominated the jacuzzi, one taking selfies of himself from all angles. A good-looking young couple sat at the bar drinking fruity cocktails. A few women were spread over the loungers, talking animatedly. There was a jug of cold water and a platter of cut fruit: help yourself. Around the edges of the room were half a dozen doors, each leading to a different sauna experience. My mission was clear: try every single one.

The coolest, at 70ºC, had a television in it, showing advertisements for massages and other treatments. I couldn’t help but feel the broadcast was meant as a punishment for sitting in such a wimpy sauna.

The hottest, advertising 100º, roasting the back of my thighs as I sat down on the hot wood. A man in long shorts nodded at me and lifted a bucket of water, asking if it was OK to pour water on the hot rocks for steam. I nodded my assent. A moment later, I stared down at my lap, protecting my face from the hot air dropping down from the ceiling. I lasted just five minutes and was grateful for a cold pool afterwards.

I entered a cooler room with bowls of mud laid out on tiled benches. The new-age music piped throughout the place, probably an album called “Spa Relaxation for the Noughties”, was blissfully silent, but every so often, the room filled with the sound of frogs ribbiting. I started to smear the mud onto my thighs and arms. My bathing suit, which had started as a fetching aquamarine blue, turned grey and grimy around the edges. This would never come clean, at least, not under the shower with the bathing suit on. I swiped unhappily and glared at the renewed chorus of frogs.

Another tiled room, full of steam, held a bird bath full of salt. I began to scrub it on my skin before realizing it was a mixture of salt and oil, turning myself into an oily-salty mess. My bathing suit was never going to be the same again. I grabbed the coiled shower head and began to rinse. I was still quite sticky and feeling like a rejected french fry when the water stopped. I turned the shower on and off again. A single sad trickle of water dripped out and then it was still. I left the room to find the closest shower, relieved that at least the lack of shower had happened in the salt bath and not the mud bath.

As I rinsed, I saw a woman in uniform go past with a mop. I quickly grabbed my towel and approached her.

She gave me a friendly look. “Yes?”

I explained in English that the salt-room shower was broken. She stared at me, clearly not understanding a word. I repeated myself. She shrugged. I touched her shoulder, leading her to the room, steam escaping as I opened the door.

”Oh no. No,” she said. So she knew at least two words in English.

I was convinced I could make this work. ”The shower,” I said, gesturing at the faulty appliance through the steam. She shook her head again, pointing to her uniform and mop.

With a blush, it dawned on me she thought I was inviting her to join me in the steamy salt-room. Or, maybe more likely, she thought I was asking her to rub salt onto my back and other hard-to-reach places. Embarrassed, I didn’t want to let her leave thinking I was propositioning her.

I attempted to mime the problem, holding my empty hand above my head as if it were a shower and making pssssssht noises.

She held my gaze and said psssssht back to me.

Emboldened by my success, I said “no shower” and repeated my pssssht demonstration, except this time I abruptly stopped the noise and looked, bewildered, at the imaginary shower head in my hand, shaking it and peering at it.

She furrowed her brow. “Pssssht?” I had a feeling that she was debating calling security.

“Pssssht,” I said, encouragingly. I stepped towards the outside shower, still dripping, and pressed a button. “Psssht! Shower!”

“Yes, shower,” she agreed, looking relieved that we’d found a common ground.

“But no salt shower,” I said.

My only possible redemption from this insane conversation would be if she could understand that I was reporting broken equipment as opposed to regaling her with my mime skills. I pointed at the steamy room. “No shower.”

“Yes, shower!” She looked horrified. “Sauna then shower!”

OK, we were on the wrong foot again. But with that, she lost patience with me. She waved her mop at me and walked away, with one nervous backwards glance to make sure I wasn’t following her.

The stress of the mud stains and oily-salt and the young woman had outweighed any relaxation I might have gained from the spa experience. I had not, I felt sure, experienced anything even remotely related to sauna culture.