Every Monday, pensioners visit the Moscow banya - a traditional steam bath that has been warming up Russians and cleaning their pores for more than 100 years, writes Nora FitzGerald.
ANTONINA ZBANATSKAYA, an energetic 70 year old, awoke early one recent Monday after a cold, rainy Sunday.
She cut some cherry branches in her garden in Odintsovo, near Moscow, and tied them together to make a sort of small broom. Then she packed up her creation, along with a floral bedsheet, towel, felt hat, slippers and some fresh plums.
A few hours later, Zbanatskaya and her friend Yelena Yurova jovially smacked each other with fresh cherry leaves.
They performed this ritual, a kind of aerobics for the vascular system and the skin, in Sanduny, a Moscow banya or traditional steam bath, that has been warming up Russians and cleaning their pores for more than 100 years.
The two women come every Monday at 10am for pensioners' day, when retired Russians congregate with their friends for half price - 300 roubles (€8) for women and 400 roubles (€10.80) for men, who have better facilities all-round.
By 11am, the women's dressing and tea rooms at Sanduny are aglow with dozens of mature women wrapped in soft, aged bedsheets (the preferred, affordable attire in many banya), their skin the colour of slow-simmering borscht.
The heat can cause what appear to be broken blood vessels all over the body, off-putting to the banya novice. But the pensioners offer reassurances that this is a good thing - the more mottled the skin, the more open the pores; the more open the pores, the more water weight that's lost, and the more elastic the skin.
Tatyana Yutkina, 56, a volunteer who watches over the bathhouse stove says: "Even ancient people collected stones, warmed the stones and made a hut with the skins of animals. Here we arrange a banya for any occasion - we just make a tent and warm the stones."
"It's great for the blood flow and the fat under the skin just disappears," says Zbanatskaya, whose skin, recovering from the heat, was beginning to gleam.
"We come in as pensioners and we leave as pioneers," she says, recalling days as 'young pioneers', the girl scouts of their Soviet childhoods. Yurova erupts with laughter.
Energised, the women return to the steam.
First they sit in the hot part of the banya. Yurova pours water into what looks like a bread oven as the women remove their bedsheets to sweat. The nakedness in the women's banya on pensioners' day is a free and uninhibited celebration of bodies that have worked, given birth, nursed babies and worked again.
Women massage one another's loose stomach muscles and beat one another's backs. They wear felt hats that look like upside-down tulip blossoms, giving them a kind of elfin look.
Some women lie down as their friends beat them with cherry and oak, a ritual taken as seriously as the beating of a bass drum in a marching band. Then they jump into the cold plunge pool, or take turns throwing buckets of cold water over one another's heads.
Yurova and Zbanatskaya take a few minutes to exfoliate - some women scrub their skin with coffee grounds mixed with honey or cornmeal and sea salt, then head back for another cycle of hot-cold. Today Zbanatskaya rubs herself down with a store-bought scrub, giving off a strawberry scent.
Sanduny has the decrepit elegance of an impoverished aristocratic home. The masseuse works in her underwear and women are massaged on chipped marble slabs. Every ornate statue or bit of original molding has a bad paint job or severe cracks.
The place also maintains three baths for men, just as it did in the 1890s, when it separated noblemen from tradesmen from peasants.
On the men's side, Vyacheslav Kratnov celebrated his 54th birthday with his pal Mikhail Kartofelnikov, 60. The men spend less time exfoliating and more time steaming, and their banya is even hotter than the women's, according to the staff. Usually, they drink tea with lemon. But because it was Kratnov's birthday, they drank what they described as chut chut (a little) vodka.
Afterwards, they relaxed in a small dressing room with amateur paintings of languid, nude women covering the walls.
"I have been going to the banya for half a century," Kartofelnikov says. "I used to go with my father during Soviet times, and Sanduny was our favourite. Now I come here every Monday with my friends."
"Our friends would be angry if we didn't make it, and it is good for our health," Kratnov chimes in.
Kartofelnikov speaks freely. "There is a medical aspect to the banya, and this is important," he says. "The blood rushes to the muscles and all the processes work better. My wife is only 38 and I have to maintain myself to be in a certain mood. The banya helps."
At 1pm, the two men got ready to leave their haven. Then they tumble out toward the street, sports bags laden with wet towels and sheets, their spirits lifted for another week.
- (LA Times/Washington Post)