Considering we stayed in Amsterdam for more than a few days, I'm sure you are all wondering how we managed to clean ourselves given our showerless-boat living accommodations. We did not bathe in the canal, if that was your guess. Our boat might not have had plumbing, but its owner was very thoughtful and left laminated pamphlets (lest they should fall into the canal) on places her guests could go for a shower. There were 3 options.
We decided on the shower that was about two and a half miles from our boat- partly because it was one of the closer options and partly because it was one of the cheaper options. At 2.50 euros plus an extra euro to rent a towel, we were sold.
"Badhuis" can be translated to bath house in English. It was an interesting establishment comprised of 3 sections.
The entrance contained a small laundromat as well as the front desk (Section 1). You had to talk to the man at the desk in order to get a key to the showers which were through a door not pictured to the immediate left (Section 2). The door at the far end of the room next to the two dryers was the entrance to the sauna (Section 3). The sauna also had showers, but we would have had to pay 12 euros to get into those. We didn't need to be that fancy and mostly wanted to hit the town and see the sights. The first day we used the cheap showers.
We returned on the second day, which happened to be a Friday. Apparently, people in Amsterdam don't take showers on Fridays. (That is not actually true, but it was the only conclusion I could draw based on the operating hours of this bathhouse.) The man at the desk told us the showers were closed; however, the sauna was open. After a brief exchange, we decided a clean body after sleeping in a boat was worth the 12 euros.
We turned to the man at the desk and confirmed our intent to use the sauna. This prompted the man to ask us where we were from, sensing from our accents that we were not locals. We said the US and watched as his face took on a very direct and serious expression. Looking directly into our eyes, he said in his own heavy accent, "When using the sauna, you must be naked."
I can't remember if I laughed out loud at the time, but when I think about the exchange now it always makes me giggle a little. He continued to further break down the rules of the sauna- you may wear your towel in the common area, you must wear your towel in the outdoor garden, you may not wear your towel in the steam room, you must sit on top of your towel in the sauna, etc. We nodded our understanding, handed him our money and he gave us a key.
I should tell you that neither Fritz nor I had ever been to a co-ed nude sauna before. The bathhouse in Budapest required that guests wear bathing suits which made the experience not unlike visiting a fancy public pool. There was next to no risk of expanding the bounds of our comfort zones in deciding to go there. But this was a whole new bar of soap.
The locker room. For obvious reasons, there are limited photos documenting this experience.
We entered a tiny co-ed locker room, which I can now say was the hardest part of the whole experience. There were two older men already in there, each one in some stage of undressing. Where do you look? I turned to stare at the row of lockers and opened one at random where I spent way more time than was actually necessary putting my things inside (my coat, my purse, and my camera). I opened my purse, closed my purse, moved my phone to a different pocket, applied chapstick, moved my coat to the opposite hook. I realized I was not willing to take off my clothes while the old guys were still in the locker room.
As it turns out, taking off your clothes in front of strangers is way worse than being naked in front of strangers.
Thankfully the two men completed the task of undressing and left the locker room. Once naked, Fritz and I wrapped our towels around our bodies and quietly schemed about how we were going to play this.
"Well, we're here. We paid for the sauna. Why just take a shower and leave? Might as well do the whole thing."
We were in agreement. Fritz suggested that we should do the steam room first, then the sauna. There was also a cool pool where you could take a dip between hot rooms, but despite the reported health benefits of temperature shocking your system, I had no interest in the cool pool. We hung our towels on a hook and opened the door to the steam room. The thick fog rushed to escape through the open door and the tiny room cleared enough to reveal a space smaller than the tiniest half-bathroom you have ever seen where 3 naked men over 65 sat with their legs spread on the wooden benches. Upon seeing a lady, all three of them shifted their positions to make room for me and Fritz and to discreetly close their legs. Again I found myself asking, where do you look? Fritz and I sat down and assumed the only position that felt even remotely natural- legs crossed, arms resting on legs, eyes cast downward in a blank stare. The other men assumed similar poses.
We sat in silence for I'm not sure how long. After a while, it was hard to tell if the liquid coating my skin was my own sweat or condensation from the steam in the air. When it started getting difficult to breathe, Fritz and I used the kind of telepathy that comes after spending 9 months in Europe with the one you love and reached for the door of the tiny steam room.
We rinsed off before moving on to the sauna (another rule from the establishment) and were happy to find it empty. The privacy was nice considering there was no steam to obscure one's vision in this space. The lights were low, but the air was clear. We discussed the apparent lack of women present in the bathhouse, but before we could do much chatting, a new naked guy walked in. Silence and downward gazes again.
Determined to make the most of my first sauna experience, I did my best to settle into myself, release the self-consciousness that had been overwhelming my thoughts, and observe my own breath. Having Fritz next to me made it a bit easier to relax. I had nothing to fear. I realized that the only thing I needed to do in this situation was to get over myself. It wasn't as if I hadn't seen naked people before, but I hadn't spent much time where people could see me in my birthday suit. It was my own prudish American embarrassment that was keeping me from fully experiencing the sauna. I adopted an attitude of "who cares?" and sunk into a state of true relaxation.
We stayed until the heat became uncomfortable and again exchanged the glance that said, "I'm ready when you are." We gathered our towels and headed to the shower room.
The final stage of our sauna experience took place in a square room containing 8 shower heads. I guess if you just sat naked on a bench next to a dude, it doesn't make much sense to get bashful in the showers. Needless to say, there were no curtains or stalls. We scrub-a-dubbed quickly and exited back into the tiny locker room. Feeling refreshed and accomplished with a new experience under our belts, we departed from the bathhouse and headed into town.
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