The Exchange Student - Naked Truths About Finland
#3 of The Exchange Student
Chris gets his first taste at the Finnish sauna culture...
Hello y'all, and welcome to the new chapter!
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4om1rQKPijI
DAY 1 UPDATE
Okay, so I promised to write some more about my first day here in Finland, so here it comes...brace yourself, this is going to get weird.
So, we had just arrived to my new residence, which was not a cool house in a park-like suburb in Helsinki, but was actually a big but isolated house standing in the middle of a grassy field miles away from anything that resembled a city, and while I could see a few other houses at the distance, they were still hundreds of yards away. This was already so weird, compared to what we had at home, but guess these Finns liked their privacy like that.
We got my bag from the car and then the lynx family A-L-A-K-O-R-K-E-A-V-U-O-R-I welcomed me in to their home. I was feeling a bit confused, distracted by the fact that we were seriously not living in a suburb, I was tired after sitting for nine hours, I needed to take a leak, I was hungry even after gobbling down that hamburger, I was in a different country, everything smelled pretty weird, and even though it was past eight pm, it was not yet getting dark. I asked about that from Karo, who said that no, it never gets dark, it's June, the sun NEVER goes down.
WTF...how do they manage to sleep?
I asked her as much and she just said that she pulled on the curtain, or just dragged her blanket over her head.
As soon as we were in the house, everyone seemed to disappear into doing something else, and I wasn't really included ,because everyone told me that I shouldn't stress myself. I stood there like a fool holding onto my big airplane bag, and watched how the dad went to sit in the living room and put the television on....and MONK was on! I couldn't believe that they showed that here, but the dad lynx Marku just said that he'd watched every episode, and liked it, though not as much anymore as he did before. I just kinda stared at it, the all too familiar television going on, which looked just like it was back at home, except that there was white text running on the bottom of the screen, which Marku told me was the translation to what the characters on the program were saying. Guess that's convenient!
I kinda just stood there like a stupid wolf, and didn't really know what to do or whether I was allowed to just walk around the house or something. Karo soon appeared, though, coming from upstairs I guess, and she told me that I could go and take my bag upstairs before the sauna.
THE SAUNA!
How could I have forgotten about that, I read about it but I didn't really realize that there furs actually did usually have saunas at their homes and used them pretty much every day! And by the sound of that, I was going to be going into one soon, and it was going to be my first time ever in one!
I followed Karo upstairs, and she told me who lived in what room, and where the bathroom was, and as we closed in on a door that I presumed to be the door to the room where I'd be staying, I actually realized what she had said and I asked her about the bathroom and who would be sharing it, and she said that that everyone used it.
Okay... now that might take some time getting used to, since I always had my own bathroom next to my own room, but guess things really are different here in small weird ways like that, and I decided not to think too much about having to share a bathroom with a girl! I just hoped she isn't too keep into make up and all that stuff that keeps furs like my own sister stuck in there for hours at a time, or so it feels.
The room she showed for me was really nice, though, and there was a bed and a television and all sorts of furniture, and it was all nice and the room didn't smell funky or anything like that, though there was the same weird smell that filled the entire house, but guess that was just the natural scent of weird foreign furs living there, so I didn't wonder about it too much yet. Karo told me that there'd be snacks served after the sauna, and that there was also beer in the fridge, a fact that really made me smile, since I'd definitely NOT get a beer after a shower at home, and that was something really cool alright!
I put my bag down and sat down on the bed for a couple of minutes to send my parents a text that I was alright, and I yawned a bit, and wondered how this all was going to be like. I got bored pretty fast and then went out again, and passed a door which I knew to belong to the room for the little brother, and I heard the sound of explosions there, meaning that he probably had some cool game going on, and then went downstairs and found Karo and her dad watching television, but the mom was not there. I got lots of smiles and greetings from them, and dad Marku asked me if I was okay, and I said I was, and he asked me if I was looking forward to the sauna and whether I ever had been to one, and my answers were a yes and a no. The dad lynx laughed at that and winked and told me that he'd see what I was made of once we'd be in the sauna.
Say...what????
I was starting to feel a bit weird about the sauna by the time little brother Miko came down the stairs wearing a bathrobe and asking if sauna was ready, and Karo said that she thought that it probably would be in a few minutes, and that followed by the brother going out to the kitchen, only to return with a can of Coke. Karo told me that I could get some towels and a bathrobe from the bathroom.
So...there I was...only minutes away from what I now knew to be a communal visit to the sauna, with this lynx dad and his son, furs I'd known for only a bit over an hour, and right now we were just about to go into a room where we'd sit naked together! I wondered if it was polite to say that I didn't really want to go and would only want to have a shower, but then again, I also wanted to try it out, but didn't know what it'd be like going there with other furs just like that!
Well, I sure found out soon, when everyone seemed to be ushering me towards the direction of a mysterious door that led into a tiled bathroom, and beyond a glass door was a room with wooden walls and wooden seats in there, and I suppose that was my first glimpse at a real sauna. It got a little bit less grand because I was also expected to perform a kind of a private strip-tease right there as well, with these strange furs who didn't seem to be bothered one bit to get rid of their bathrobes and enter the scorching hot room beyond the door, fully naked and spotted backs and backsides on the show!
I stood there for a while, looking pretty stupid, probably, and then they told me that I could have a towel if I wanted to, that some furs liked it anyway, and I was glad for that, so that once I got my clothes off and wrapped a big white towel around my waist, I didn't feel quite so exposed with these strangers when I took a deep breath and stepped in.
WOW!
I mean, it's really hot there...how hot is 100 Celsius? I really should try to get a hang of these European numbers, but I can just say that it was HOT in there. I began to sweat and pant a bit almost as soon as I stepped in and sat down next to Marku and Miko, who didn't seem to mind at all, and they were actually leaning back and relaxing and joking to each other in Finnish, and I really hoped that they weren't joking about me and my modest towel.
Then came the water.
They had a bucket in there, and then Marku simply scooped up some water with a big ladle of sorts and threw it over the big pile of stones on top of the stove, and immediately there was an intense rush of wet heat all over me, and I doubled over, feeling like my back was getting FRIED!
And the thing was, the lynxes only leaned forward a little bit, their ears flattened, yeah, probably to protect them from the steam, but otherwise they just laughed and smiled and generally seemed to just enjoy it! I felt like I was getting cooked, and didn't dare to sit up even after the heat subsided, and the hissing disappeared. The two asked me how I was doing, and I only managed to tell them, weakly, that it was a bit hotter than I expected, and Marku told me that I didn't have to sit up there on the highest level too long if it felt too hot. I grit my teeth and decided to be a MAN and endure whatever these crazy Finns could take, and I didn't want to be seen as a weakling at the very first day!
Still, I don't know how long we sat there, but I sweated harder than I ever did, it practically poured out of me, the towel was all clinging to me because of sweat and steam, and I felt sticky, and oddly breathless, too, and my back itched...in fact, all parts of me itched, under my furs. The ordeal only ended once dad Marku said that it might be time for Chris - he calls me that all the time now! - to get a cold shower. Was I ever happy to do that! I practically rushed out, dropped my towel and then got a cold rush of water over all over myself, and it felt fucking great! My body almost trembled under it all, I felt cold and hot at the same time, for a while, and I breathed out hard, and by the time I was finished and wrapped in a bathrobe, I felt an odd tingling sensation all over my body, and I felt both tired and energized at the same time, which was cool.
The two lynxes gave me plenty of smiles and told me that it'd only be better tomorrow, when we'd do something special with the sauna, and I must say I'm curious about that, but I'll tell you about that when it happens. I tried not to feel too weird about being ogled by smiling naked lynxes, but then Marku told me to go and see what the girls had got up to while we were bathing, and I did as much.
I wandered over to the kitchen and there were mother Lisa and Karo, both of them drinking cider and eating sausages! Thick, huge sausages were on the table, fried, somehow, and they had what looked like cheese on them, and Karo was having hers with a lot of mustard and ketchup! They made a lot of questions about the sauna, which I tried to answer the best I could, and then Lisa told me that I could get whatever I wanted to drink from the fridge, including the alcohol! For someone who's always had to sneak around drinks that was pretty awesome, I tell you, and they didn't just had a couple of bottles there, I counted at least three six packs there, one beer, one cider, one something I didn't know what it was, but I took a beer that had a bear's face drawn on it, and got it opened by Lisa - I could only stare awed. The beer tasted okay enough, I mean, like beer, and I was pretty curious about sausages too, because I was still damn hungry!
Marku and Miko came over soon enough, too, telling the girls that it was time for them to go to the sauna while us "boys" would sit down and talk about stuff while eating and drinking. They gave the men some bursts of Finnish that I suppose might have been a bit of cursing too, because it sounded angry, but they were laughing, too, so maybe I was just confused by the weird language. I was left there to sit with the two lynxes now, and Marku got a beer and Miko had more Coke, and let's just say that the sausages tasted really good after the airplane food, though definitely not quite what I thought it would be. Guess everything around here is just a little bit strange compared to how things are at home.
The rest of the night wasn't too eventful, I was feeling tired and soon had to tell the curious bunch all too eager to know about life in The States that I really had to go to sleep soon, and I was bid goodnight by them, and I think they pretty much lined up down there and watched me go upstairs, yawning.
Think I'll tell you some more about my next day in my next entry, sure as hell's been...interesting!
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