Two November's ago, following close on from my fortieth birthday, I decided I would have a last fling with youth. I most definitely do not look it (not by any wild stretch of the imagination), but psychologically I will be forever fifteen, unsure, confused, naive, eternally hopeful and stuck on a roundabout, facing crossroads and possibility in perpetual moratorium.
A few years earlier whilst staying at a hostel in Granada, Spain, I had told myself my dormitory days were numbered. Whilst I was retiring to (bunk) bed, most of my roommates,a few of them young enough to have been teenage accidental offspring, were getting ready to go out. The din was unbearable and I felt like the party pooper I didn't want to be.From now on it would be B&Bs for me. As a solo traveller, it is true that hostels do provide age appropriate opportunities for encountering like minded individuals, sharing travel anecdotes, avoiding eating out alone in a restaurant at night (terribly sad but lunch is OK) and making new friends.
However there comes a time in life when you just can't hack the common room conversations any more, the 'awesomes', the broad generalisations, the wacky backy intimations of coolness, and another "where do you come from?", trying to explain that Malta is not actually in Russia, just ain't worth the spittle.
Good conversation is hard to come by and you are just the saddo ageing -wanna be hippy- in the corner, whose sole usefullness seems to have become bundling all the drunksters into the taxi after the nightclub with the god-awful-soulless-noise that passes for music, and making sure they get back safely. With age comes a reluctance to part with one's creature comforts; you can't tolerate cheap alcohol, you buy Scholl hiking boots, camping loses its allure (I'll just come for the day), one night's lack of sleep leaves you grumpy for days and you'd rather fork out extra for the en suite than share a toilet rim (your hygiene requirements are prissier).
But I had decided upon Berlin. Had left it too long. Berlin to me was sleaze and decadence, bad hairdos and kinky nightlife, pop-up bars and riverside beaches. Berlin was unpolished, avant garde, it was the underground 20's in every other city. Cabaret and the Kit Kat club, swing parties, jazz and smoke.Berlin was graffiti, freedom, a wall torn down, a bombed city, post modernly reconstructed. Berlin was cheap, and smelled of beer and sweat. Berlin was Doc Martens and leather, flea markets and community squats, free thinking and ghettoed, open minded and bohemian. In Berlin, the tube was easygoing, everyone dressed down and had terrible fashion sense. Berlin was the night and fun, fun, fun.
Berlin was gonna be my final hostel stay. The last few holidays had been staid, four star and B&B. However I did not want to do Berlin alone. I wanted to be with party people, this was my bow out to youth and so it was.In fact I have to go back to Berlin and see it by day (but that is another story). Youth is infectious, spotty, adventurous, full of false baravado and it doesn't think of the repercussions. It is OK for a while.
Now on with the sauna story
The orange themed hostel in Berlin that did not sleep, (everything was orange, including the communal showers and everyone appeared to like playing musical bunk beds: as in hopping and humping) came with a discounted entrance ticket to a chain of dubious sauna and health spas.
Having just emerged from bed, one late afternoon with a thumping hangover induced headache and deciding that a detox was on the cards, I thought I'd start off with that sauna for high tea.
Off I traipsed and finally found the establishment after much questioning as to its whereabouts, and being guided there by a pharmacist, in an inner courtyard, surprisingly quite respectably looking, down a dim, not so respectable urine sprayed (feline or human - I couldn't tell) alley way.
For some reason I had forgotten my shower flip flops back at the hostel and I didn't think to ask for any at the reception desk. When I exited the changing rooms, the reception desk was deserted, and after eons hovering round the corridors, I decided to tip toe my way to the sauna, fretting about contracting verrucas (which I did get and which were a real expensive nuisance to get rid).
The Sauna was situated next to a plunge pool, but both were separated from the bar and lounge area by a port-holed door. A notice affixed to this door read that all swimwear had to be removed before entering. One could wear a towel round around your waist, but this also had to be removed before entering the sauna. Bummer. The Germans of course are quite nonchalant about Nudity. In the GDR museum I learn that in East Germany behind the wall, mass, nudist family, summer holidays were quite the norm. Nudity in the sauna is de-riguer, but I couldn't understand how not using your towel to park your sweaty bum on, would make it less hygienic. Anyway 'When in Rome...', plus I had gone off peak (discount catch) and there was no one about. So off came the trunks which I pegged on a hook near the door (hoping I would find them hanging there upon exiting, not wanting to trasverse the distance back and forth to the locker room, barefoot once more ).Once inside, I reluctantly l part with my towel, try unconvincingly to assume an air of diffidence, fan my genitals decorously with one hand pointing southwards and gingerly open the doorto the sauna with the other. It is empty and I heave a sigh of relief. I am alone and spend the next half hour alternatively baking, and exiting the Sauna a few times to excruciatingly lower myself an inch at a time into the freezing plunge pool. Luckily there is no one to see my dangly bits, dangle no longer and shrivel into anonymity every time I do that.
By now I have got used to this nudity jaunt and given the general state of desertion I feel I can be a little daring and explore the rest of the facilities on offer. Wrapping the towel tightly around my waist I brave the nip in the outside corridor and walk upstairs to where a sign informs me, the steam room is located. It is off with the towel again and this time I do not bother to cup my jewels, even if there are more people milling about upstairs than below.
Entering the futuristic styled oval steam room, I can't see a friggen thing, I try to keep my gaze in the middle distance trying not to look anywhere too specific (that dreaded eye contact in an elevator syndrome) but I couldn't help but keep peering into the nebulous mists, anxious as I was, not to stumble or sit on or against anyone else's dangly bits.
The blue neon tinged clouds of steam, part for a second and I espy a supine body laying on a slat. I feel for an empty place, a fair and comfortable distance away from the seemingly only other spa occupant. Then the next dilemma presents itself. Once settled do I just sit there cross legged, arranging my dangly bits as decorously as possible, do I hunch over modestly, covering the obvious, do I lay face down bum up? or do I go for the jugular and splay?
My sauna stamina levels are quite low and every five minutes I need to get up and exit. This time I opt for a cooling shower, eschewing the plunge pool. The man in the steam room, conversely has enormous staying power and doesn't even shift position.Every time I re-enter he is still lying there. But this in itself is not unusual. Some people can spend hours simmering away. I always get incredibly claustrophobic in a sauna, keeping one eye trained on the door, nervously fearful of being shut in; my worst nightmare, almost as bad as being eaten by a shark. Whereas I hate the cold and rarely ever travel to snow bound destinations, given the choice, I'd rather freeze numbingly death, than boil to scalding suffocation.
I wonder if I should attempt conversation at all. It seems quite strange; two people in a closed environment, not exchanging any form of communication. However he is in a supine position and his body language is not exactly forthcoming or condusive to dialogue.
It all becomes glaringly obvious that the reason nobody was in the sauna, was because an alarm had been sounded and who wants to share a steam bath with a dead man? A posse of people all with their modesty intact, towels wrapped round their waists and sagging chests are grouped around and questioning the spa managerand entire spa staff who have also gathered to watch the unfolding drama. All of a sudden all eyes are fixed on me as the steam room door opens wide and I emerge . I take another tumble and lose all modesty as my hands scramble widely, undignifiedly clutching air. It is ghastly awful. I have to pick myself ungainly off the floor and walk towards them, because my towel is hanging on a peg behind the manager's head. The scene is played out in cringing slow motion. As I approach them, the crowd of people silently parts, allowing me to walk in between. My face is redder than any sauna flush, my shoulders are up to my my ears. Eyes on the floor I make a swipe for the towel, but it does not come off the hook. I yank and yank, trying to un lassoe it, for what feels like ever. I don't even bother to wrap it around me. I just bunch it over my crotch and make a run for it. I hear someone say that the guy in the sauna had taken a cocktail of uppers and downers and poppers and I don't wait to hear what else.
My God, how I make a dash for that changing room. I clatter, flapping down the stairs, no tiptoeing anymore. To hell with verrucas and corns. Willy left, willy up, willy down, willy to the right, I stream down the corridors with wings on my ankles. The mortification and humiliation of it. I could see myself on the evening news, a sauna murder suspect. I tell u I fumbled and dressed and checked out as fast as I could. Well in actual fact there was no one to check me out, as they were all upstairs gossiping.
Only afterwards, catching my breath in the street, several blocks away from the scene of the 'crime', do I realise the police may have wanted to interview me and if there had been any suspicion of foul play, boy oh boy had I made myself look guilty by taking off like that. But I was damned if I was going back. Tomorrow morning I would be leaving Berlin. Today I would lie very low.
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