NOT a spitoon. Photo by fooishbar on Flickr

The Chicago Tribune’s hip social news outfit, Red Eye Royalty has a post, 5 simple sauna rules. They are rules we can all live by:

1. Don’t SPIT on the sauna rocks!
2. Get permission before you turn up the heat!
3. Hurry up and close the door!
4. Don’t wear street shoes!
5. Never sit bare bottom! (“What makes you think someone wants to sit in a puddle of your booty juice?”)

A commenter adds a 6th: When conversing, be mindful of others there who don’t want to hear about how “Tysheena’s baby daddy’s cousin came in her house a slept with Jerome in her bed.”

[Red Eye Royalty]

Until now that is. Thanks to the excellent Pods plugin for WordPress, we’re now able to share more of this information with you.

We’ve added Find a Sauna to our menu.  As of today, our database is pretty light, with only 7 entries, but our goal is to continue loading them slowly until our full listing is available for you to enjoy.

We’ll call this a public beta. It’s far from done yet, and there are still a lot of tasks that we’d like to do on this before calling it “done.” However, we think that you can get some value from this, even in its rough state.

Of course, if you have a favorite sauna, please use our Submit a Sauna link to let us know about it.

Scene in the showers of a Korean sauna. Photo from Urijamjari on Flickr.

The Basics: Bathing areas are single-gender, and nudity is mandatory. Leave any shyness and modesty at home, because provided towels are small and privacy is not a consideration in the design. Larger saunas (called Jim Jil Bang (???) have coed areas where clothing is required. Uniforms are provided for these. Entry fees usually are not timed. Remember to take off your shoes as soon as you enter the locker room.

What to Bring: Korean saunas are known for being all inclusive: Towels, soap, toiletries (including toothbrushes!), robes and even uniforms for the coed areas are all provided in the entry fee, as is a locker with a key on a bracelet. The toiletries are usually basic, discount brand items, so if you prefer something specific, you should bring your own. Sandals are not allowed, so don’t bother bringing them. If you are going to a large sauna with pools in the coed area, or a small sauna that is having a coed night, you need to bring a bathing suit.

About the Korean Sauna:

The Koreans have a special place in their hearts for their saunas. Fortunately for us in North America, their émigrés also have an entrepreneurial spirit. Most major metropolitan areas already have at least one Korean sauna, and it seems that more are opening regularly. The Koreans aren’t marketing these services to us round eyes.

Of course, if you are in Korea, the sauna is ubiquitous, with saunas in every hotel and bathhouses of every kind, seemingly on every corner. In the large cities, the Jimjilbangs are huge, and open 24-hours per day. If you’re a traveler on a budget, they can be an economical alternative to a hotel for a night or two.

Most Koreans treat the sauna as part of their regular routine. It is a planned outing for cleansing, as well as socializing and general wellness. Nearly every sauna or steam room is equipped with some special material or herbs, and the largest ones have saunas made from jade or lined with gold, and some have tubs made from the wood of thousand year-old trees. Unique special treatments, especially for women, are offered, as well as deep tissue massages and exfoliating scrubs where the scrubbers pride themselves of ridding your body of every dead skin cell.

Arrival:

Upon entering a Korean sauna, the first thing to greet you is the reception desk. Here, you pay your entry fee, and be given a key to your locker. You may also be given towels, toiletries or uniforms here, if this establishment rations them, but most give you all you want. If you are looking to get a treatment of any kind done, you should inquire here about how to book this, and how to pay for it. Leaving the reception desk, the desk attendant points you in the direction of the appropriate locker room.

Most Korean saunas use your key as a house charge card. For low-tech places, when you order something, they call the front desk and read them your locker number and the amount so they can add this to your bill when you leave. Higher tech places give you an RFID key where charges are directly loaded onto it as they are made. When you check out, you pay for any balance due.

Storing shoes in a locker, from the Korea Tourism site. It includes a list of Jimjilbang in Seoul

As you enter the locker room, pay attention to the flooring. It will change from a basic industrial floor treatment to (usually) a wood-grained vinyl floor. Take off your shoes before you step on the different floor! There will be a shelf or locker here for you to store your shoes. If your shoes are expensive, you may carry them to your clothes locker for safekeeping, but don’t let them touch the locker room floor until you reach the shoe area. Slippers / sandals are for the toilet, and are not allowed here either. Socks may be worn on the locker floor.

When you find your locker, make sure the lock works, then strip. Towels, robes, and uniforms will usually not be anywhere nearby, and shyness or modesty, especially in the single-gender areas, is not appropriate.

The Bathing Area:

Once you are naked, you can enter the bathing area. This is usually separated from the locker room by a glass door. If you have a robe or any other clothing on, take it off before you pass through this door as it is not allowed in here. Reading material is also not allowed in the bathing area, but can be used in the rest area.

Once you enter, you should find a shower and wash yourself thoroughly before entering any of the pools or saunas. You will have a choice between (western) stand-up showers, and traditional Asian showers, where you sit on a low plastic stool. This first washing is important, because when you enter your body is dirty, and putting a dirty body into one of the baths will taint it for everyone.

At this point, you may first become acquainted with the complimentary towels. They are usually hand-towel sized, but freely available. (At times, they may be stored just outside the bathing area.) They offer no coverage for those looking for modesty. However, they can be folded into really nifty hats.

After this, you will be free to explore the baths. At a minimum, all Korean saunas have:

• A hot dry sauna,
• A steam room,
• A hot tub (> 105°F / 40°C),
• A warm tub, and
• A cool tub.

Larger facilities seem to add more pools before they add more sauna or steam rooms to the facility.

Unlike other cultures, there is no proscribed routine in the Korean bath: You alternate between the features in the bathing area according to your personal preference, spending as much or as little time in each as you wish. The only hard rule is after leaving a sauna or steam room, you must rinse yourself in a shower before entering a pool.

The saunas are always hot and dry in a Korean bath. Most will have a tray or bag of mugwort herbs near the heater. Most are wood, but a few are made from more exotic materials. Most have signs prohibiting throwing water on the rocks – It’s supposed to be dry in here. Oddly, all seem to have a TV inside of them. Bring a dry towel in to sit on both to protect your derriere from the very hot benches, and for hygiene. Because of the heat, you may want to bring a second damp towel in to cover your head to keep it from overheating.

The steam rooms are more typical. Again, they will usually have a tray of dried mugwort herbs somewhere near the steam generator, but otherwise, you can expect a typical steam room experience. I have seen a few with an area of the floor covered with river rocks that are used for massaging your feet by sitting or standing and walking in place on the rocks. Again, bringing a towel to sit on is prudent, as is having another one to cover your head… especially if there are Russians who frequent the place.

After a quick rinse in the showers, you can explore the pools. The hottest pools have no jets and are very hot. No, very, very hot. The warm pools are closer to the temperature of a typical hot tub, and will usually have jets of some kind, but may have more elaborate water massage features. The cold pool will again usually be without jets, but will usually have some sort of deluge shower in it to allow you to cool your head without submerging it.

After a circuit of the saunas and tubs when their skin is soft and pliant, most Koreans will return to the showers for a more thorough scrub, or hire one of the attendants to give them a full body scrub. Both are done with an abrasive plastic washcloth that can be found / purchased in the sauna. With lots of soap, the washcloth is scrubbed over the entire surface of your skin, taking off all the dead skin cells as you go. If you hire one of the attendants, expect them to be thorough. (Yes, they will scrub there.)

At this point, many will also shave, brush their teeth, and do other ablutions in the showers. This is a cleansing ritual. Most saunas provide toothbrushes, toothpaste, razors and shaving cream. Soap and shampoo is provided at the showers. It’s usually all discount brands, so if you like a specific product, bring your own.

After this, the bath is done, and it’s time to take a rest.

The Rest Area:

The rest area varies on the size of the sauna. In a small sauna, it can be a room with recliners, couches, or beds of some kind. In a large Jim Jil Bang, it may be a coed, multi-floor facility with restaurants, salons, and a variety of other activities.

Clothing is usually worn in the rest area, unless it is coed, where it must be worn. For single-gender rest areas, robes are provided. For coed rest areas, a uniform of a t-shirt and knee-length shorts are provided. These are usually color coded by the sexes.

A Jim jil bang can have many different features in the coed area, including workout rooms, restaurants, salons, pools, internet cafes, and especially more saunas. The most unique saunas in the facility are here, with walls made of gold, semi-precious stones or special clays, and unique heating systems like cars loaded with hot stones that exit an oven at specified times. All seem to have a story about what specific healing benefits each has.

In the rest area, you can usually find a collection of recent papers and periodicals (usually all in Korean), and are free to bring in your own. There will also be at least one TV, most times tuned to a Korean station with news or sports on the men’s side, and Korean soap operas on the women’s side. A few have chairs with individual TVs allowing you to watch what you want, and these will also have separate quiet rooms if you don’t want to watch anything.

The biggest Jim jil bangs have restaurants, multiple rest areas, salons, and other dry saunas in the coed areas. Some even have additional, swimsuit required, pools.

NSFW Video of an Aufguss at Saré Sauna & Beauty in Oldenzaal NL (in Dutch)

When you visit a German sauna, don’t forget to plan your time there around their aufguss schedule.

What is an aufguss? Well, simply it’s the German translation of the Finnish löyly. Most online translators can’t deal with these words. However the forums at LEO.org suggest it is the ritual of sprinking the hot rocks on the sauna stove with water to make steam.  Sometimes the water is scented with herbs or other essences. It takes 26 words in english to express what the Germans and Finns can in one!

In the other parts of the world where water is thrown on the rocks, it’s a self-service procedure. The sauna at my YMCA has a bucket in the sauna for that purpose. If you want steam, you fill the bucket, and you sprinkle the rocks with water. In Germany, especially at the large saunas, it is a procedure administered only by a trained Aufgiesser.

Most large saunas post their aufguss schedules near the information desk in their saunaland. It shows what times, which saunas, and what special features will be featured in each aufguss for the day. When you see one that you would like to try, go to the appropriate sauna a few minutes before the aufguss is scheduled to start and take a seat. On busy days, you may need to be in the sauna 15 minutes before, as they fill up quickly. Consider the temperature of the sauna when you do this, because if you thought it was hot normally, it will seem much hotter during the aufguss.

When the appointed time arrives, the Aufgiesser arrives. He or she works for the facility. The aufguss begins with the hanging of a sign on the door: “Aufguss in progress: Please do not enter.” If the sign is up and you go in anyway, you will raise the ire of all the others in the sauna. However, if you are inside and the heat becomes too much for you, it is (grudginly) tolerated if you leave quickly.

The aufguss begins with the door being propped open, and the Aufgiesser uses his towel as a fan. This does two things: It brings fresh air into the sauna, and it gets the sauna stove firing at full power. When he closes the door, he will introduce himself, and give a short description of how long the aufguss will last, and what to expect.

Now comes the water on the rocks.

Your Aufgiesser will have entered the sauna with some buckets in hand. These can be filled with plain water, but usually will have some essential oils or other fragrances mixed in. Some facilities rate their aufguss experiences. Mild ones have a small amount of water sprinkled on the rocks. Intensive ones will have whole buckets thrown on the rocks at once, sometimes followed by buckets of ice, which vaporizes more slowly and prolongs the aufguss. As the water steams off of the rocks, you will feel the heat of the sauna become more intense as the air becomes more humid.

Now the Aufgiesser earns her pay: She begins by taking her towel and twirling it around over her head to circulate the hottest air throughout the sauna chamber. You will feel a greater sensation of heat after this. Next she will start at one side of the room, and fan a group of people with her towel to wash hot air over them. She will walk around the room and make sure everyone gets a dose of this heat. Sometimes she’ll then work her way back to the starting point.

When it is your turn, sit up straight, and spread your arms slightly away from your body. Close your eyes and exhale as you hear the snap of the towel. Enjoy the wave of heat that rushes over your body. If you feel like the heat will be too much, raise your legs in front of your body, and hide your face behind your knees, letting your legs shield your body core from the extra heat.

When your Aufgiesser is done, give her a round of applause before she leaves, and takes down the sign. Stay in as long as you can, and enjoy the heat. Then cool down, replenish your fluids, and find the next scheduled aufguss.

Visiting a sauna in Germany, Austria, or its near neighbors is a unique experience — Nudity is mandatory, and on most days the sauna is mixed-gender. You can immediately tell the first-time visitor by their wide-eyed stares after entering this textilfrei zone. This increases when a group of sauna regulars comes in behind them, and sheds any clothing quickly and proceeds to the baths without modesty. As a first-time visitor, you quickly realize you can check your clothes and modesty at the door, or be advised by the saunameister to leave.

Finding a Sauna

With more than one public sauna for every 13 square miles, you can be sure you’re never too far from a sauna while in Germany. Most major cities have many to choose from, and even some small villages have their own sauna. There are three websites and some books that can help you find one:

Sauna in Deutschland is the website of the Deutschen Sauna-Bundes, the German Sauna Federation. They list most public saunas (and also sauna-related businesses) in Germany. According to their search results, as of this writing, they list 2400 public saunas. However, only 50 of these have links to more than just their address as part of their listing. When searching, you are much better off using their map search, or entering a postal code into the search box as city searches are done literally (e.g. “München” returns results, but “Muenchen”, “Munchen” and “Munich” return none). The site is in only German, but pages translate well with Google Translate.

SaunaSauna.de claims to have more than 2200 sauna addresses in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in its database. From the search screen, you can search via a clickable map, PLZ code, or city name. The results returned are basic. Most locations show only the name, address and phone number of the sauna, and a brief description of its type. However, with this information, a quick Google search can find the facility’s website for more information. The website is only in German, but there is very little text to read between the advertisements on each page.

Insauna.com [NSFW] is a directory of saunas and other free time activities for Germanic Europe and its surroundings. Insauna makes its money by performing independent ratings of saunas. Starting with its list of the Best Saunas, which ranks nearly 200 saunas who have paid for their extensive audit, and awards them from one to six pearls based on their results. The amazing Therme Erding, for instance, gets 5 pearls and ranks 3rd on their 2009 list.  Ranked saunas get a multi-page profile on the site. You can also browse by country and city for an exhaustive listing of saunas, and other free-time activities for each municipality. The site is written in a very verbose Austrian German, which can give Google Translate fits. The site itself is textbook annoying web design with animated icons and a busy and cluttered visual style.

ADAC, the German auto club, publishes the best maps and road atlases of Germany, and are an indispensable resource if you’re planning to drive at all while in Germany. Their maps have a legend icon that shows locations of saunas, pools and swimming holes. I like the Kompaktatlas for its size, but the Freizeitkarten are specifically set up to help you to find leisure time activities. They are available at bookstores and gas stations everywhere in Germany. TrekTools is one of the few sites that sells these in North America.

Going to the Sauna

For the most part, the saunas in Germany do not supply anything to their guests other than the baths themselves and a locker. It is always a good idea to check the website before you visit to find out the hours, what days are single-gender, what other facilities are available besides the sauna, and the pricing to know which package to ask for when you arrive.

When packing your bag, you should always bring:

• Soap, shampoo and other toiletries,

• Two (2) towels (if not available for rent),

• Waterproof shower sandals,

• A plastic bottle of water, and

• Fresh clothes for when you’re done.

You probably want to bring:

• A bathrobe (if not available for rent),

• A swimsuit if there is a pool as part of the facility,

• Workout clothes if there is a fitness center as part of the facility, and

• Reading material.

Sauna Ettiquette

This is Germany, and of course, there are rules. Violations of these will bring you the scorn of both your fellow sauna goers, as well as a possible reprimand from the staff:

• You must be naked in the sauna area. You can wrap yourself in a towel or robe when you’re walking around, but don’t try to wear a swimsuit in the area. Any pools in the sauna area must be enjoyed naked. However, if there is a separate swimming-only area as part of the facility, you will need to wear a full-coverage swimsuit in that area.
• Your sandals, robe and glasses should be left outside of the sauna room. Hooks, shelves, or racks will be provided in the area.
• When in the sauna, no part of your body should touch the wood benches. If sitting, spread your towel down from the backrest, under your butt, and down to where your feet will sit. Steam rooms vary by facility – some require you to sit on your towel, some provide mats, some provide hoses to wash where you sat. Watch what others are doing before you go into one.
• Silence is golden. In the sauna and steam rooms, conversation is not tolerated. You can say hello as people enter, but otherwise, you should respect others by keeping quiet. This is also true of any quiet rest areas the facility has.
• You must shower before entering the sauna area, and you must sauna after exiting any of the heat baths before entering any pool.
• You do not throw water on the rocks in the sauna. This is the job of the saunameister, and is called an aufgu?. When an aufgu? is happening, you never enter the sauna room. You may exit if absolutely necessary.
• The sauna is the Garden of Eden. Don’t be the serpent and ruin things for everyone.

In Conclusion

If you ever get to Germany, leave your modesty behind and try a sauna. It’s a great, relaxing way to spend your free time. The Germans don’t seem to notice that they’re naked and after a short while, you won’t either.