Russian bath anyone?

This will be a long one, so I apologize in advance...

Last night I had the opportunity to go with one of our friends to an authentic Russian bath or "banya" (баня).  Since it has been ridiculously cold - or at least has felt that way - the thought of a sauna didn't seem a half-bad idea.  Sergey picked me up from camp, we drove to get another Sergey (I'll explain the reason for this detail soon) and then stopped a few more times for items I didn't really understand before driving through a neighborhood to a big, green gate.

Apparently there are 2 kinds of banyas in Kerch; a public banya, which is a sort of distant, males-only cousin of a public swimming pool, and a home banya, which is cheaper and more private with less rules and hassle.  This time we used a home banya that is both nice and affordable.  Essentially the owners have taken some portion of their property and developed the necessary rooms (a steam room, jacuzzi, sitting room, bathroom and changing room), dipping pool and outdoor area (aka. BBQ patio).

I forgot to mention that though private, the banya is a male communal event and I only knew 1 of the people with whom I was intended to bond.  We arrived to find about half the guys there and promptly changed into our "banya-ing" attire.  Sergey F. (my "in" with this group) introduced me to another half-dozen Sergeys and we were ready to visit the steam room.

I have to take a time out for a thought that occurred to me last night which almost made me laugh out-load.  Have any of you seen the movie "Goodfellas" with Ray Liotta?  There is a part near the beginning of the film where Liotta's character Henry Hill takes his future wife to one of the "family's" Italian Sunday lunches.  Henry is introducing Karen to everyone sitting around a dinner table the size of a destroyer and it goes something like this:

"This is Paul and his wife Marie...and Maria, her husband Paulie, their son little Paul...this is Fat Paul and his wife Marie and their daughter Mary..."  The entire place is named some derivative of Paul or Marie!

Last night I realized that out of 7 guys, 4 were named Sergey and the others had names of which I ALREADY knew multiples.  On top of that, I can count on one hand the number of non-Tanya's I've met in nearly a month in the country.

Ok, back to the facts.  The ritual of the banya is essentially going into a room that feels like a more humid version of the surface of the sun, followed by dips in a pool outside which needed a hole busted through it's polar ice cap before we could enter...and repeat.  The steam room is like a sauna you might see in the US with heated rocks in a wood paneled room.  They bring in a tub of hot water and bundles of beech and eucalyptus fronds which have been carefully dried and preserved since summer.  Once you've been in and out a few times, you return and very somberly beat yourself and each other with the soaked bundles.  This has 2 effects; 1. It burns like a mother on your poor, necked, already heat-irritated skin because the water is almost as hot as the air but conducts the heat much more efficiently.  2. It creates welts so that everyone looks like rejects from an Easter passion play.  Apparently it also invigorates and increases circulation.  

When I say that this room is hot, let me put it simply...after a few minutes in the heat, my hair was too hot for me to run my fingers through it.  The thermostat (which must have been as heat-crazed as the rest of us) registered a high of 120 degrees C...my handy computer conversion widget places that at 248 degrees F!  I'm not sure that this is accurate, but it was seriously hot.

Intermingled in all this, everyone visits the sitting room where there are drinks and both dried and fresh fruit.  One of the Sergeys stayed out more often and cooked up some amazing ribs and in the middle we had a huge, cholesterol-ladened meal.  I loved listening to them discuss everything next to the sun (which was still in the steam room) in untranslated Russian.  It was truly a unique cultural experience and apparently I have volunteered to go again on the 19th of this month.