National Open Sauna Day

Is a real, true thing that happens here in Belgium. In fact: it was last Thursday. And, yes, yes we did partake in it.

National Open Sauna Day (here) is organized by the 'Sauna Confederation of Belgium'. It involves getting people interested in and trying out saunas (and hence getting hooked and coming back for more!). This can be done at: a private sauna -- where the participant can have 1 free hour at a private sauna, or a public sauna -- where the entry is FREE for your whole stay.

For those of you who don't know, I really like baths -- really hot baths. When I was doing summer research in Frankfurt several years ago, I discovered that I. Love. Saunas. There really isn't all that much to do in Frankfurt proper, sure there's the natural history museum, but that's not an adventure. There's hiking all around the city, and that's nice. There's the Main river and all the castles on it UPstream, which is also quite nice. But I wanted something to do more local. Checking out the map from Tim (Tim was my PhD-handler. He got worried about me running for hours because I was lost and got me a mini-map. Tim's awesome!), there was a place called 'Bad Homberg'. From German class I knew 'bad' means 'bath'. And the hunt for hot-springs or 'thermal bad' was on. It just so happened that I found one of the thermal bad s in that area, and I brought Philippe with me. It turns out there was way less hot-spring and a whole lot more sauna than I bargained for.
But I learned that saunas are like baths, only with air instead of water.

So, this brings us back to last Tuesday. I was reading the local paper (because it's still a challenge and we need to know when new roads will be blocked off or when/where there will be bike races) and I saw a small clip about 'openbare sauna dag'. I tore it out and said that we needed to check this out. That evening, we got ourselves booked for an absolutely free trip to the sauna.

There were several to choose from, but we chose one that was just over the boarder of the West side of Brussel, and decided to go just after Philippe got off work (he works in Brussel, it makes sense). We met up in Brussel-Nord, got on one of the awesome trains that are everything that one imagines from 1960's European train travel (plus they have baller under-seat-warmers!) heading West. We change trains. We head more West. We get off the train and start walking. Slowly everything turns from city to suburb to fields covered in mist and moonlight (it gets dark early now) and then we start seeing stands of trees just past the quintessential manner house -- and a bunch of steam rising into the clear night. We arrived. I'm sorry I don't have pictures but I figured it'd be a bit suspicious if I showed up at a sauna with a camera, I mean, there's a bunch of naked people there and all.

We check in at the desk and Philippe hands in the email with our free sauna trip codes (we were supposed to be able to get a 'pass' but something went wrong with the website, and we called and it was okay just to bring in a copy of our email. Wheew! Sauna trip saved!). We got lockers and then... it was sauna time. :D

Awkward photos!

About a month ago Philippe and I went to the celebration of the end of the first stage of remodeling for one of Philippe's coworkers. It was somewhere in the outskirts of Antwerpen and involved a train ride and then a ride in a car.

We were supposed to go with Philippe's boss - whom also lives in Leuven - but she got ill and couldn't come. So me, Philippe and the pumpkin bread that was cooling on the trains made the trip on our own. We drew an awesome wrapping-paper for the bottle of pink wine (it goes with everything, everyone will drink it, one simply can't go wrong giving it to someone if you don't know their wine preference. I will stand by this opinion until someone can disavow it!) on the way. We got quite a lot of attention, but that was okay! My pumpkin bread did smell delicious!

So, we arrive at the party after another terrifying car ride. The family had one row house and then, a few years ago, were able to purchase the row house next door. Extensive remodeling later, they have one house with 2 house numbers, 2 stairs, 2 separate cellars, and a pretty awesome place was created.

Tours of the house were conducted. Awe was had. Mimosa recipe was shared. And then almost everyone left, but, being dependent on a ride back to the train station, we were obliged to stay until the end. And it was just 4 couples in the end. Most were native French speakers, but for my sake they all seemed to speak Dutch ( I speak now French). And then there were pictures. They are how the post got it's title.
Check them out:

awkward photos of me

On the way back to the train station I learned from the French speaking GPS 'go straight'. It's true: immersion is a splendid way to learn a language without trying. :D