Adventures in Atlantis: The Estonian Experience

On Saturday I was able to take a 45 minute train trip with a bunch of students down to Taevaskoja, which is basically an Estonian National Park. We hiked a few miles (6 km or so, I believe), ate a picnic lunch, and were able to return before the rain hit. It was really a great place, it reminded me of WV in a lot of ways (except for the glaring lack of mountains). There was a natural spring and lots of pretty forest and tons of mushrooms which I always enjoy spotting. It was good to get out and see the country and I met a few new people which is always good.

Later that night I was finally treated to the sauna that my group had been promised for winning the pub crawl.

There were only a few of us that showed up, but that was good because it was a pretty small room (they paid for it so we didn't expect anything lavish). I had never been in a sauna before, but most of the people I went with were Finnish and Estonian, so sauna was practically a way of life for them. I learned a lot about it. They ordinarily are naked in the sauna, but they decided to prevent culture shock we would all wear swim suits. It's kind of like taking a bath to them, and they consider it silly and unnecessary to wear clothes to sauna.

What basically happened in our sauna is there were three levels of benches, the highest being by far the hottest. In one corner was a stove of sorts covered in extremely hot stones. Occasionally someone would pour water over the stones and our Estonian guide would recommend we cover our eyes and ears. This is because you get an intense surge of heat as the stones heat the water and steam the room. My body enjoyed it just fine but my face felt like it was about to melt off. It hurt to breathe through my nose and my eyes and upper lip really felt hot. It kind of felt like being in an oven, honestly. They said it was a really dry sauna (which means it can be really hot and you don't notice as much) and they guessed that at one point it was over 100 degrees (which is 212F, aka *boiling temperature*). I was at least comforted to know that the Estonians and Finns also got uncomfortably hot. Your recourse in that situation is to hop over to the showers ten feet away and blast the cold water. I'd heard that if you had heart problems it was bad to do this but it's how they do it and the colder the better. By the end of the night I was really comfortable with going between sauna and shower. It felt really good and it made you really relaxed. Also we would often take long breaks where we would sit and chat and let our bodies get back to normal temperature. The others were sauna pros and brought beer and wine cooler-type stuff which is apparently pretty typical to drink there. I didn't, but I ended up buying a sports drink from the counter because you need to hydrate yourself after all that sweating.

Needless to say after all that hiking and sauna I slept pretty soundly that night and into the next day. I awoke feeling really worn out but in a good way. Sauna is a weekly thing for these people, and I think I could get used to that. I didn't get any pics from the sauna, obviously, but here are some highlights from the trip to Taevaskoja (I took 83 pictures and uploading them all would be a nightmare):

This was actually the last photo I took as we were leaving the platform, but the uploader put it first and I'm too lazy to change it. I like it, though.