A visit to the classic Turkish bath "hammam" is a great way to spend time. Here you can get traditional massages and experience the healing power of ancient wellness treatments.
It all starts with the dressing room
The Turkish bath has three sections. The first is a lobby with a fountain, there are changing rooms and a ticket office. You need to pay for the desired procedures at the cash desk You can choose between a regular wash or a massage wash. At the checkout, you will be given a special Velcro bath towel and traditional wooden slippers. Changing rooms are a cross between a room and a locker, here you can leave your belongings in a locker.
Putting on your flip-flops and wrapping a towel around your hips, you need to go to the next room. It contains toilets and showers. In the next, main section, in fact, all the main action takes place.
It is warm rather than hot in "hararete". The temperature cannot be compared with that which usually reigns in Russian baths. There is a lot of soft, dense vapor, and the light penetrates through special holes in the dome. There are marble benches throughout, where visitors lie. Masseurs work in special niches. Hot and cold water flows from numerous taps into special sinks. Most often, there is a small pool in the back of the hall, which serves for decorative purposes, since the Turks consider standing water to be unclean and do not bathe in it. In the middle of the room there is a special elevation, which is called the "abdominal stone". There is a firebox under it, the stone itself distributes heat throughout the room.
The process itself
First, lie down on a heated marble lounger with a towel or sheet on top to get a good sweat. The low temperature in the hammam allows even those who cannot tolerate high temperatures to visit it. However, heated marble and high humidity warm up the body no worse than a Finnish sauna with its off-scale temperature. After about half an hour of reclining on a marble bench, your body becomes relaxed and ready for a massage.
Now you can go to the masseur, who is located nearby at a special bench or in a special niche. Traditional Turkish massage is very intense, so it can seem quite painful if you are not used to it. Nevertheless, there are a lot of benefits from it. At the end of the main massage session, the attendant stands on the visitor's body and performs a foot massage. After this procedure, give a little rest and relaxation.
Now the actual washing begins. The attendant scrapes the visitors with a special horsehair mitt, which removes the dead skin layers. Then the attendant dilutes a special soap and literally envelops the visitor in soap suds and flakes, massaging a little along the way. Then the visitor is washed his head in a marble sink, poured over with warm water, and then very, very cold.
A visit to the hammam takes on average one and a half to three hours, leaving behind an incredible feeling of cleanliness. In the lobby, after all the procedures, the visitor is offered soft drinks and a huge fluffy towel. If a visit to the hammam has exhausted you, you can lie on a lounger in the dressing room for a while to collect your thoughts.
