Dadja and Russian banya

It’s 11:00 a.m. when the doorbell rings again. “Are you ready?” asks Father Vladimir as he enters the apartment. “Sure,” we reply, pack our things and get into his Lada a short time later. We leave the city of Krasnoyarsk behind us, cross the South Siberian Mountains for about 50 kilometers and stop in a small village. “This is our dadscha”, says Vladimir, not without pride in his voice. We are immediately greeted by a pretty little dog yapping happily and wagging its tail as it races around the Lada. Mom Sascha also welcomes us with a hug. We enter the garden through a wooden door. Sascha immediately takes the opportunity to show us around and explain the individual beds and shrubs. “We grow almost all the fruit and vegetables we need to live here. Many Siberians have their own dacha outside the city,” she says, pointing to the strawberry field, the potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, cranberries and blackberries, apples and pear trees. Then she leads us into the pretty little wooden house. On the veranda, as is customary here in Russia, we take off our shoes and enter the heated living room. “It was so cold this morning that I had to heat the room,” Sascha apologizes for the heat in the 15 square metre room. As soon as we are seated, the food is served again. “Kuschet, kuschet” (Eat, eat), she asks us, beaming with joy, to take plenty of the home-made borscht (national dish – vegetable soup), meat and fish pockets baked in dough with vegetables, and coleslaw dressed with mayonnaise. “I love having guests, especially when it tastes as good as you do,” she laughs. After dinner, we all have a rest together. I snuggle up in one of the armchairs and doze off. Here is the normalna (a statement for many situations e.g. okay, alright, or normal)

“Come on, let’s shoot a bit with the air rifle,” Jenya asks us after the siesta. An old wooden stake is immediately placed at the end of the potato patch, a piece of paper is nailed in front of it and a circle is drawn. For twelve-year-old Aloscha, the change is perfect, as he spends most of his three-month summer vacation out here alone with his parents. As the air rifle is rusty and old and the ammunition arrows have also seen better days, many of the shots miss. Interest quickly wanes and the banya (sauna) is heated up.

“Do you want to go to the banya now?” asks Jenya. “Gladly,” I reply. We are now next to the main room of the cottage in a small chamber of about two square meters, undress and hang our clothes on the hooks. As soon as I enter the banya, the heat almost takes my breath away. “Let’s sit on the bench,” Vladimir suggests, and we sit down next to each other like chickens on the top step. After about five minutes of sweating profusely, I’m slowly thinking about leaving the room built from heavy old wooden beams when Vladimir asks, “Are you ready?” “What do you mean?” I ask in astonishment. “Well, for the infusion,” Jenya replies. “Of course,” I waffle a little and wait for things to happen. Vladimir asks us to leave the bench. I sit down with Jenya on a stool at the back of the banya, as far away as possible from the homemade stove. “Would you like to put your hat on?” “A hat in the sauna?” I wonder. “Yes, in case your head gets too hot,” he explains, giving me the felt hat that would fit in well in the South Tyrolean mountains. “Are you putting the hat on?” I ask. “No,” laughs Jenja. “Well then I don’t need one either,” I say, waiting to see what will happen next. Then Vladimir throws a ladle of cold water into the oven opening onto a kind of iron plate. Hot steam immediately rises, almost taking my breath away. It soon burns into my windpipe like boiled oil, and I immediately put my head in my hands to protect my face from the hot breath of an erupting volcano. It only takes a few fractions of a second for the steam to eat into my every pore and I think I’m going to burn instantly. Only the fact that Jenya is sitting next to me laughing and Father Vladimir is sitting on the top step next to the stove tells me that a human being can survive something like this without dying. I grit my teeth and endure. I let myself be tortured by the horribly hot steam until Jenya looks me in the eye and asks, “If you get dizzy, let me know. Then we have to get out right away.” “Okay, I’m fine,” I reply with the best smile I can manage under the circumstances. After another five minutes, we leave the heat room and sit down on the sofa in the antechamber. The many mosquitoes and flies are a pure relief compared to the heat in there. “In winter, when it’s 40 degrees below zero outside, we jump naked into the snow,” Vladimir explains, which I believe without hesitation, because my body is so hot that I could imagine nothing more than cooling it down with ice water. “How often do you repeat a sauna session like this?” I ask. “Oh, five, six or seven times, depending on how we feel.” “What? You can’t survive that,” I reply, to which the two banja specialists hold their stomachs in laughter.

“So, are you ready again?” asks Jenya. “Sure,” I boast after my body has returned to normal temperatures. We repeat the soon to be painful procedure three times until they ask if I’ve had enough. “But by all means. If you want, you can go on a little longer to get your seven times full, but I for one am quite satisfied,” I reply with a grin. “Well, let’s wash now,” Jenya suggests, opening the door to the sweat chamber, letting me go first and closing it again. Now barely able to bear the heat, I immediately reach for the shampoo to wash my head. “No, sit down and enjoy yourself a little longer. You don’t have to wash yourself right away,” says Jenya politely, reaching for the soap and scrubbing his body. In the meantime, I keep pouring cold water from a bucket over my legs and head. It’s the only way I can hold out until it’s my turn to wash. Then we finally sit outside again in the wonderful chamber with the mosquitoes. Nothing can shock me at this moment. I enjoy the slowly cooling body and feel a leaden, pleasant tiredness creeping over me. As soon as we get dressed again, the barbecue is stoked up. There is food again. Meat and salmon are placed on the glowing charcoal. Then there’s plenty of everything again. As soon as I have put my cutlery to one side, I sink into the armchair and fall into a sleep of exhaustion. An hour later, Tanja wakes me up. “Denis, get up. We’re going back to Krasnoyarsk.”

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