Sauna during winter...is a wonderful experience!


We were invited for a sauna party at Mattias aunt´s place last Saturday.
It´s really nice to do something different sometime especially the type of activities that required to do nothing but relax. Sauna is a ideal activities to kill bad weather and socialize!

Studies claiming a positive influence on general health, sauna is particularly good for your skin and muscles. Once your skin has sweat ed out its toxins and your muscles have warmed and relaxed, you'll feel much better in yourself too. Many people believe that having a regular sauna helps them to fight off infection as well, as the boost in circulation helps to keep your immune system in good order. It can also help you sweat out a cold, and clear out your airways so you can breathe more easily. In Finland most family have a sauna at home and it is a sport for the Finnish.

I used to think that sauna is a good place to socialize, a place where people hang out sitting on wood planks and look at other mostly nude people. I had overcome my problem that it is not allowed to wear swimsuits in most Saunas for sanitary reasons. Today, I could be naked among strangers of the same sex but I still can´t feel natural or comfortable being naked among peoples of the opposite sex. I think it´s my Asian value still exist inside me.

I am not sure what´s the type of sauna Margoth have but there are stones placed in a compartment directly above the firebox. It takes shorter time to heat than the heat storage-sauna, about 1 hour. A fire-heated sauna requires manual labor in the form of maintaining the fire during bathing. Cold water were poured on the stone to promote higher temp. and steams.Sometime,the temp could raised up to 85 degree.
The sauna were divided into 3 sections, first the "Hall" where you can hang your towel, cloths leave your shoes. Then come the "Shower" area where you can shower immediately after the sweat bath then the sauna at the end of the log house.There were cooling cabinets where you can store cold drink and food in the sauna. If you like you can also boil egg in the water boiler or even have a fondue party..I was thinking of our Chinese steam boat! That will be super!

We were pampered with delicious cheese cubes, cut sausages, olives and salted cucumbers. Cold light beer for adult and Nelina had carbonated soft drinks.
When the heat became unbearable, we went out to roll our self in the snow to cool down where else Anders & Margoth standing outside looking on taking pictures & video. There were smoke coming from their bodies due to drastic temp. changes from the air and I thought it was so beautiful!

The sauna session lasted for almost 2 hours, we had rest in the house while the guy chatted on computer. I later helped Margoth prepare dinner. We had roasted moose stek with baked potato's & carrots, marinated dried tomato's, sour cabbage for dinner and vanilla ice-cream with warm cloud berry for dessert. After dinner we watched the horrible movie "Cape fear" while Nelina surfing on internet. I made some sweet potato's pancake later in the night for snack .

We came home at 1.45am feeling physically exhausted but mentally relaxed, we slept soundly thru the cold winter night.