HOT AND STEAMY IN BASEL

My wife and I visited our handball-playing son in Basel this weekend. It was good to see him, and good to get away from cold and rainy Denmark for a few days. We watched his team lose in Zürich, a particularly bad-tempered match; went to Bern for the day; and generally pottered about.

On Monday, while he went to handball training, we went to Aqua Basilea, a spa and sauna complex in one of the suburbs. For SFr20 you get two hours of moving between up to a dozen different saunas, steam baths, showers, and pools. The saunas had different temperatures, degrees of humidity, and scents (pine, lemon etc), while the pools were either cold, very cold, or icy. With all that sweating and washing, I don't think my body has ever felt so clean.

There is however a twist. Etiquette at Aqua Basilea is no clothing ("no sweat on the wood" signs mean that you sit on your towel in the sauna) and no separation of the sexes. I thought that this might take me out of my comfort zone, but in fact it was fine. When my son went, he was shouted at by an old woman for not sitting on his towel properly. Armed with his story, I was obviously more careful, and more naked.

Walter Blotscher