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What is the… Acorn? In Russia
That means the head of your dick must be visible.
A banya hat
So you have to be naked except for a goofy hat? That’s a hilarious mental image.
Yup. The idea is that it protects your head from overheating. You wear it so that there is a pocket of air between your head and the hat, so it’s basically insulation.
And it works! I won one at a local sauna marathon a few weeks back and you feel the difference when you take it off.
Actually, many people (or even majority) don’t wear it nowadays. It’s a protection against heat stroke, and if one doesn’t visit a steam room one will be fine, though it’s optionally even in a steam room, e.g. I never wore it.
Protecting against heat stroke potentially sounds like a good idea, but I also feel that preventing that may open you up to less obvious issues caused by being too hot for too long.
An ice cream cone? To comedically place it between your privates and the camera?
That’s the international symbol for “Circumcised dicks only”
My question also
For most mixed-gender public saunas in Finland though, bathing clothes are mandatory and nudity is prohibited. Also, nobody cares that much what you are wearing
and you can wear your swimsuit to a single gender sauna, too, if it makes you feel comfortable.This is quite opposite to Germany, where regular sauna goers might very well tell you that clothes are prohibited and that they “pose a hygiene problem”. I even heard people saying stuff like “This is a Finnish sauna, you don’t wear clothes here!” in a German mixed gender sauna. Well, the opposite is true for a mixed gender sauna in Finland 🤷🏼.
Edit: My experience is limited, so I guess I was wrong about wearing bathsuits to single-gender saunas. Thanks for pointing that out @kadotux@lemmings.world !
Jaa mitähän ihmettä? I’ve been to many public saunas in Finland and almost all of them, if not all, prohibit the use of swimsuit/-pants. At least the ones that are in public pools/swimming halls. And the reasoning being as you said, hygiene.
Edit: whoops my bad, you were talking about mixed gender Saunas. You might be correct after all
Hygiene and chlorine
Can confirm re: Germany. It’s often explicitly framed as a hygiene issue. That said, there are saunas where you may wear stuff, it’s usually designated. Plus you have “women only days” in a good number of public saunas.
In Russia it’s also common to eat dried fish and drink beer/sometimes vodka in the room next to the sauna.
In Germany it’s often framed as a hygiene issue, because that’s easier to sell to randos. The real issue it that it’s uncomfortable to be nude when there are clothed people all around you. And the sauna itself is more comfortable when nude.
It’s kina like a prisoners delemma, where the pareto solution is when everyone else is nude, and the nash-equlibrium is when everyone is clothed. Because of this, some people will want to defect (i.e. wear clothes), so we need to apply outside pressure to enforce the pareto-efficient solution (i.e. by asking people to remove their clothes).
Hmmm, in my experience the discomfort goes away quickly and you stop caring about your own or other people’s genitalia, or lack thereof, in plain view. But I appreciate the game theory approach 😺 Given the nonrationality of many social things, I’d wager that it’s just a convention whose true meaning matters less than the fact that “it is the way it is”.
The restaurant in my local Therme is in the Sauna area. Of course it’s not a naked restaurant, but a “wear a bathrobe or get something to wear” restaurant. But let me tell you: it’s really weird that there are people with clothes on around you in that restaurant. Not uncomfortable, but weird. And the sauna is a place to relax, so I really think it’s better that everyone has to be naked so that nobody can feel uncomfortable. For most people it might not matter, but for some people it does matter.
Makes sense! The value of an equalizer, and maybe a sense of mutual vulnerability. I guess it’s a bit like being the only one actually wearing a costume at a costume party.
Sometimes there are also men-only days. Tho they kinda suck.
Woman only day:
- Start with a sparkling wine
- Get a few skincare things for the sauna
- Nice smelling infusion
- A bit of after-care program in the water
Man only day:
- We put FUCKING BEER on the hot stone and add some BBQ scent. FUCK YEAH, MANLY.
I wish man only days where also a bit more “care” focused instead :(
Not fish necessarily, but any beer snack, yeah.
True! But dried fish is very common as a beer snack in Russia, so it’s a bit of a default.
Fair enough. I live here and always surprised my family whenever I refuse dried fish with beer - I’m more of a smoked cheese braid or chips kinda person.
A swimsuit is quite common in Norway. Basically you ask yourself the question “am I going to make anyone uncomfortable”. If it’s single gender and people are not extremely shy, you generally go with only a towel, but nobody is really going to care. If you’re a gender mixed group of friends that don’t know each other that well, you might prefer putting on a swimsuit in order to make sure people feel comfortable and included.
From my experience the Swedes are the same.
This is based on private saunas with friends. In public mixed gender saunas I don’t think I’ve seen anyone go naked, but I’m sure certain Finnish tourists would and nobody would mind.
Can confirm the german part: In my gym there recently was an outrage because a Muslim member went to the Sauna with bathing clothes multiple times, which in the end resulted in his contract being terminated. Being naked in the sauna is almost the law here (but in the end nobody cares if you wear your towel or put it below you. Just remember: No sweat on wood!)
I’ve never been in a sauna. What do you mean by no sweat on wood? Isn’t the entire experience sweaty?
I don’t know how it’s outside of Germany, but at least in Germany in every public sauna there are signs saying “No sweat on wood!” (or in German: “Kein Schweiß aufs Holz!”)
What this should mean is that too keep the wood from getting too much salt exposure, you should always sit or lay on a big towel which prevents your body from touching the wood.
Of course the experience is extremely sweaty, thats the reason to go there, so you’re correct on that part :)
It is. That’s why you should sit on a towel, instead of directly on the bench, with your nekkid sweaty butt.
And Great Britain should be orange. Everywhere here would be 100% fine with you wearing a bikini or swimming shorts in a sauna as long as you aren’t completely nude.
yeah I was gonna say…have been to a few saunas in Britain and people always wear bikinis or shorts
Posting Reddit links to lemmy feels wrong
Not only wrong - I can’t look at the image without turning off my vpn
Replace www with old.
I consider it as a glorified Imgur. If you want to upload the images to catbox.moe or anything else and share the link, feel free, I would update the post!
Why not just upload the image to Lemmy as you make the post
In my experience, the U.K. doesn’t do nudity in saunas - or anywhere else.
How do you reproduce?
With the lights off.
You need a license for that.
Not in saunas
Saunas used to be the place to give birth in Finland back in the days
I figured they just emerge from the snow
Yep, because sauna was the cleanest room in a house
clothes in the UK have special flaps to facilitate this
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Hopefully not
My experience is that the UK is about as prudish as the USA.
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Every sauna I’ve ever been in you leave your towel outside and keep your swimming costume/shorts on. Festivals are an exception lol, but UK should be blue.
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And they are dicks.
Regards,
Norway
Be gone oil man
Finns are naked in public saunas if they are same-gender saunas, like in public swimming halls.
Ekkö nää ole käynyt uimahallissa koskaan? Bullshittia nimittäin väite, että julkisissa saunoissa ei oltaisi alasti… Vähemmistössä turistisaunat on, väitän.
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Avantouintiseurojen saunat ja turistisaunat on pieni vähemmistö saunoista. Älä viitsi misinformaatiota välittää suomalaisesta saunakulttuurista, kun muutenkin netissä vilisee mitä ihmeellisimpiä selityksiä “suomalaisesta saunomisesta”.
Feel free to scrape your sagging scrotum along the floor, or hell bend over at the worst possible moment and show us all your grey squirrel roadkill anus, but for the love of the gods please put a towel down before you go sit on stuff.
People who don’t put a towel down should be shot.
Agreed. I don’t need the sweat infused into the wood and me sitting on top.
There may be rules to shower beforehand but some will forget to choose to ignore it.
Why isn’t Estonia covered? Saunas are like a rule here, like I haven’t lived in a place that doesn’t have a sauna in a 5km range and like every house has a sauna, even my last 3 work places had saunas. The rule here is naked with friends and family and cover all the naughty bits with strangers and coworkers.
I agree that Estonian sauna culture deserves respect. As for naughty bits covering, is there any difference between genders of friends and family and coworkers, or is one gender per sauna session the implication?
Depends on the crowd. Public saunas are usually gender segregated but for private ones it depends on who is comfortable with what but a mixed crowd is not uncommon from my experience.
What is the allowed yellow icon? Beanie and diapers?
Sauna hat.
https://finnmarksauna.com/en-us/blogs/sauna-news/sauna-hats-why-you-should-wear-one
So I was half right. Sounds like an Onion story.
What about the diapers? I was joking initially but now all bets are off.
Signed,
“Uncultured” AussieA sauna hat is great if you’re bald. Even if or especially if you like a scorching hot sauna.
The map doesn’t say you may wear a hat, it says you must wear a hat and otherwise be naked (apart from the diapers or whatever is).
No, the map says “Sauna-Dresscode für Europa.”
Am talking about Russia and Latvia.
Your Denmark doesn’t have a dresscode according to this. I suppose even a gimp mask would be OK.
I doubt that the hat is mandatory in Russia or Latvia, but it makes more sense there, because they run high temperatures.
No, there’s no official dresscode on this in Denmark, however each place usually show their rules on signs. There’s no rule against a gimp mask, but it might conflict with other rules.
The entire chart is actually a bit misleading, because the Finnish sauna is completely different from the German. The way they’re used aren’t comparable.
In Denmark it was first imported from Finland in the 1970s where people built saunas at home. Most of these are gone by now, because it’s a waste of space in a family house if the family don’t use it. The public pools usually have Finnish saunas, but at too low temperature. Wellness places try to make it better with higher temperatures but at the same time they’ve introduced a lot of the German rituals instead of the Finnish. More recently it has become popular to have winter bathing clubs. They usually buy Canadian barrel saunas. So that’s why the danish sauna situation is a cultural clusterfuck.
So your scalp is more private than your privates? Fascinating
it’s mainly Russia so I guess it’s a gallon of moonshine
In Czech Republic & Slovakia it is usually a towel to sit on & being naked. Optionally you can wrap yourself in a larger towel or something like that. Most people respect it, but I did experience one woman being told to not wear swimming suit or leave the sauna area.
How is it in Denmark? I’ve seen beautiful saunas there, where you just jump to the sea to cool down. I NEED TO KNOW!
In Finland people are told to not wear swimsuits to sauna not because you absolutely have to be naked but because if you’ve been in a chlorinated pool the chemicals vaporize in the sauna and are harmful to breathe.
Interesting. So would wearing underwear be fine then?
Underwear would probably be considered a bit unhygienic but I doubt anyone minds if you want to wear a towel.
What’s going on in Russia and Latvia? What does that symbol mean?
I think its a towel on a head?
My guesses ranged from hat, to acorn, to boob cap. Thing is I wouldn’t put all of those past Russia
In hungary from my experience you only wear the towel and no clothes. In some places they even tell you that its mandatory to take it off.
Weird, my experience in Hungary was the opposite. No one nude and I think people would have been really weirded out. This was my experience from several thermal baths in the country, although always mixed gender. Maybe if there’s single gender days it may be different.
Polen was machst du?
Wenn man allgemein so schaut, also auch in die Kommentare hier, scheinen die anderen Europäer ganz schön prüde zu sein.
Zu viel Ammi Propaganda gesehen.
Did I miss something, did Iceland secede from Europe?
Nah. It melted.
Sorry…
In the late 16^th century, a German pastor, Salomon Schweigger, accompanied the ambassador of the HRE to Istanbul and wrote an ectensive report about his visit.
One of his examples of (perceived by him) moral superiority of Germans over Turkish culture was, that in Türkiye public baths were single gender with obligatory clothing “to avoid sexual arousal”, while back in Germany men and women were happily sharing the same bath butt naked without being sexual aroused.
So – German Freikörperkultur is far older than it’s name.
In the Netherlands towels are optional in single gender saunas, or at least you have to bring one to sit on but you don’t have to cover your self. That’s my experience with men’s saunas though. Not sure how it works in women only saunas.
I’ve never seen single gender sauna/spa there, although some have ladies only days. Usually it’s mixed and everyone is naked all the time, if they want (if it’s cold out people tend to wear their bathrobes when moving around). And you sit on a towel except in the wet saunas. Swim clothing is not allowed, except on certain days.
