Food and housing

You will receive their best accommodations and food. It is true that the cafeteria food is like most cafeteria food, but it’s not that bad. There are also some “corner stones” near the dormitory if you want a snack. The rooms are equipped with a little kitchen as well, if you want to cook Dorm life may be noisy and crowded if you are not used to it, and your hosts may not understand if you simply want to be alone. Be sure to have toilet paper with you at all times because public restrooms have none, and not only you but someone else might need it. Be prepared for water shut-offs on the weekends (translation – fill the bathtub or a bucket with water so that you can flush the toilet).

Back in America, we spent two weeks traveling the West coast by train. My backpack yielded two pairs of jeans and shoes, one skirt, a pocketknife, a map, a couple of books, and a journal. Nadezhda, meanwhile, crammed hair rollers, a curling iron, a pound of cosmetics, half a dozen pairs of shoes, and three quarters of her wardrobe into a suitcase, an enormous knapsack, and a backpack. When men failed to offer their assistance at the Amtrack station, she was incensed.

“If we were in Russia, we wouldn’t have to carry this”, she hissed as she struggled with her luggage.

“Why not?”

“Because we’re women!” It doesn’t look right.

BANYA

To hear a Russian describe it, the banya is Edem: a steamy, womblike place where you can take off all your clothes and snack on caviar and smoked herring. I’d been told since I started studying Russian that it was a cultural tradition in which I had to partake. So before Kandy and our friend Heidi headed back to the states at the end of the semester, we visited the banya near the 1905 Street Metro to dip into the fountain of Slavic vitality. A babushka took our rubles at the front door and pointed us to a brown vinyl booth with a shower curtain for privacy. We crowded in and kicked off our hiking boots and ripped off our socks, chatting all the while. When we realized what needed to come off next, though, we grew strangely quite and started staring at the fuzz between our toes… Taking a deep breath, I slipped out of my final layer and covered myself with a towel.

Together we flip-flopped out of the booth, through the dressing area, and into a room lined with communal showers crowded with stichless Russian women of all ages, shapes and sizes. Some were washing, others drying, still more rubbing their bodies with ointments and oils.

“This is it? This is the banya?” I asked disappointed. I had waited all these years for a glorified shower? Where was the caviar? What about the vodka?

“There’s got to be more. Where does this go?” Heidi asked as she pushed on a heavy wooden door that was hot to touch. I followed her through and was immediately engulfed by a sweltering steam that burned my eyes and nose and pieced every pore of my skin. This, as it turned out, was the banya part of the banya – a wooden construction with a large furnace stove at one end. Twenty women were perched at different on the bleachers before us, each one red, naked, and sweating profusely…

As I quickly closed the fiery door, a babushka with more wrinkles than a shar-pei marched over and seized Kandy by a bikini strap.

“Take it off! Off!” she scolded.

“Back in a second,” Kandy called over her shoulder as the bellicose babushka dragged her outside and yanked the offending bikini right off her body. According to folklore, banya are inhabited by an evil spirit called bannik that bewitches clothes worn inside. Good thing babushkas are around us…

We spread our towels on the first row and cautiously lowered our buns upon them. The wood was hot as blazes… By the end of the third minute, I could take the heat no longer.

Gotta go, I motioned as I rose to my melting flip-flops and made a beeline for the door…

“This way, devushki, a middle aged woman called out, and led us down a corridor and through another unmarked door. This one opened to a swimming pool filled with half a dozen skinny-dippers laughing and dunking one another beneath the water… “Davai!” our guide cried as she held her nose with her fingers and did a cannonball into the pool.

The three of us obediently jumped in after her, unaware the water was as balmy as an ice bucket. The screech that ripped through my lips ricocheted off the walls…

“Cold! Khorosho! Frrrriiiii-o!” I cried as I frantically climbed up the side of the pool. It was so slippery, I fell back inside and convulsed in shivers. “Who are these people? Sadists?” I thrashed my limbs about to ward off hypothermia. I thought banya was supposed to prolong one’s life – not end it!

“Khorosho, da?” a lady asked as she calmly bobbed up and down in the water like an apple. Isn’t this nice?

I swam – quickly – to a ladder and climbed out. The others weren’t far behind.

“Let’s do it again!” Heidi exclaimed.

Cursing her silently, I followed her back into the sweat house…

Just then, a stout babushka walked in carrying two buckets of birch branches soaked in water. She pulled one out and proceeded to swat herself with it. …the other women started climbing off the bleaches and crowding around her. They each selected a branch and all began to thrush themselves, too, as in some ancient, tribal Slavic dance.

Meanwhile, a second babushka created more steam by scooping cool water out of a pail and splashing it against the heated stones inside the stove… The birch leaf reached out and grabbed my wrist. “Davai!” she cried as she smacked me with a bundle of twigs.

“Owwwww! Owwwww!” I yelped as I tried to cover my more sensitive pairs with my hands.

Kandy laughed so hysterically that the babushka reached over and swatted her, too. Then we each grabbed a branch and slapped the old woman back – to her delight – and then each other and then ourselves.

Nothing breaks down barriers like nudity.