Being in a sauna when someone throws water on the hot coals is painful. Your otherwise useful skin, which kindly keeps your blood on the inside, now becomes a source of intense discomfort. There’s a burning wall of steam which envelopes your body, threatening to burn through the very fabric of your body, then to heat up your vital organs like one of those boils-in-the-bag meals grandparents unwittingly buy for their student grandchildren. Steam scalds the inside of your nostrils and you become aware of the tightness of the bends in the curves of your nasal passages, as these turns force the steam into contact with your sensitive membranes. Its like snorting Deep Heat. The less robust sauna inhabitants start to fill the sauna with a burble of profanity, as they pray that their eyes don’t boil and explode.
Now, it is a widely held view that saunas are good for you. This is probably the result of extensive advertising by deep undercover scandinavians anxious to shift lots of pine. Its like vegetables. People think they’re good for you. Why? Because arable farmers tell you so. Because vegetarians tell you so. Are these people to be trusted as impartial? Certainly not. Anyhoo, I believe saunas have regenerative effects, especially as they can take your mind off stinking hangovers. By making you want to get out of your burning skin.
So the hotel selected for our sojourn in Copenhagen was sauna-positive. We saunaed now, we saunaed then. There was much dehydration to herald a new dawn of drunkness. Endurance limits were surpassed, and then came the vodka sauna. A big impression had once been made upon me by some Russian engineers. They showed me photos of themselves in a sauna, wearing fur hats, and necking vodka shooters. Thinking about it, it seemed obvious that in the same way that you had a grade of wine suitable for cooking, you would also be able to get a similar calibre of vodka. Saturday morning thus saw our intrepid trio, in the sauna with an ice bucket and a bottle of Dansk vodka – the nearest I could find to cooking vodka.
Throwing vodka on the sauna coals. What a great idea. It makes you feel faint. It makes your eyes sting. It burns your throat. But best of all, it makes you drunk in about five minutes. Wahey.