Sunday, June 25, 2023

Boxed

The beautiful horsebox sauna @inshriach
A shorter intermezzo than usual. Comparitively more text than eye-candy. 
Starting off with the sauna world.

Daily News Hungary (22-5) notes the trend of bigger-is-better has also reached Hungary:
'On 17 June, the world’s first 7-star sea themed water park will open in Győr, Hungary. This unique bathing complex will be the biggest hit of the summer season'.
No word concerning what it actually entails.

An instagram post from Norwegian pay-for-news site (Avisa Oslo, Apr. 29), brings to our attention the following (translated):
'With almost a doubling of operating profit every year, KOK is ready to expand.
- It will be more social and more catering.
This is how Lorange summarizes how the new KOK will be from the end of May'.
KOK is an operator of floating sauna's in Oslo harbour. Lorange refers to Kristin Lorange, owner of the company. 
The post probably coincides with the announcement by KOK of the "Island of Saga":
'Finally, we can share that KOK Oslo branch Langkaia is getting its own mother ship! Coming soon is Saga, a year-round bathing island with stylish facilities!
ДЕВОНЬКИ
ДАЙТЕ ВАШ ТОП-5 в МОСКВЕ
Баня с банщицами
Расскажите, где звездочки светят в общественных местах.
The Guardian shares (Jun. 17) how Aufguss is coming to the US, Vegas style:
'But “wellness” has saturated so deeply into US consumer culture that even Las Vegas, America’s capital of outrage and excess, has started to adjust. As spas from Minneapolis to Brooklyn have started to advertise Aufguss among their offerings, one of the strip’s newest hotels, Resorts World Las Vegas, has begun hosting the performances four times a day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday – with experienced Las Vegas dancers taking the roles of the “sauna meisters”.
...
Presenting “a sauna experience combined with the theatrics of a show” is still considered avant garde in the US, said Kim Key, the Las Vegas spa’s director, who said spa staff were still educating guests on how Aufguss works, and that it does not yet make sense for them to charge an additional fee for the performances.
...
For now, Vegas is still in the early stages of Aufguss adoption. Awana Spa’s ritual is one of the simpler versions of the form, not one of the narrative-driven, elaborately costumed performances that Keijzer said would probably be too much for American tourists experiencing the form for the first time. (Nudity is also too much for Americans, whose repressed national culture leads to swimsuit-wearing in the sauna.)
The most dramatic version of Aufguss, a gladiatorial-style battle between two sauna meisters, currently takes place in Poland, Keijzer said, in a specially built 300-seat sauna modelled after the Roman Colosseum.
While Americans experiencing Aufguss are “never really ready for it” and “have never seen anything like it”, Irvine said, European tourists sometimes complain that the sauna is not hot enough for them.
“They’re so hardcore over there,” she said. “They want more heat.” 
A good find. On Vimeo a vdo on taking a sauna, named Hitzig-Ein Saunagang.
The nineteen minute vdo explores how the stare is reversed: from the female clientele to the Aufguss-ganger.

Heading off into the margins of what we are interested in, here on this blog.
Saatchi Yates, a London (UK
) art exhibition hall, has an exhibition running over the summer named Bathers:

'This June, Saatchi Yates is proud to present ‘Bathers’- a major group exhibition drawing from the rich tradition of Bathing scenes in the history of painting, in ode to the ultimate summer muse.
Tracing its genesis to classical antiquity, artists have depicted the bathing figure over the ages, from the French Masters appreciation of natural beauty, to its radical reconstruction by Picasso. Today, this tradition continues to captivate the imagination, with the new exhibition at Saatchi Yates exploring this enduring subject, grounded in the birth of Venus from the sea.
The exhibition brings together a collection of contemporary art, presented alongside renowned Post-War and Historical Masters including David Hockney, Paul Cezanne, J. M. W. Turner and Pablo Picasso. Contemporary stars such as Hurvin Anderson, Peter Doig, Henry Taylor and Eric Fischl, feature in the show, creating an artistic tapestry that reflects the breadth and diversity of the Bathers theme across the history of art. Notable pieces from Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Damien Hirst, and Auguste Rodin are also on display.
Speaking of the exhibition, Martin Gayford says: “Bathers in painting are both varied and fundamental to the human condition. The combination of unclothed bodies and water can evoke guilt-free primordial innocence: a sin-free Eden. On the other hand, the same visual ingredients can suggest the consequences of Eve and Adam’s Fall: guilt, lust, death. In either case, the subject combines in one neat package two of the major preoccupations of artists for many centuries – landscape and the nude. It is no surprise that bathers have preoccupied painters for so long, and it is likely that the combination of water and human bodies will continue to intrigue them far into the future.”

Commute
Over to h
ot springs and soaking.

We've reported previously on the archeological find of 24 Roman statues found in the muddy debris of a Tuscan hot spring. The Guardian (Jun. 23) now:
'A trove of bronze statues buried by mud and boiling water for thousands of years before being found in the ruins of a network of ancient thermal springs in a small town in Tuscany are going on display in Rome.
The 24 bronzes, mostly dedicated to the gods, are the largest discovery of their kind in Italy and were unearthed last year in the ancient springs of San Casciano dei Bagni, in what used to be a place of worship for both the Etruscans and Romans'.
FANTÁSTICO DÍA EN LA TERMA ♨️❤️
A blog entry over on yescapa (Mar. 1) concerns soaking in Spain. It features Ourense, Bande, Montbui, Arnedillo and Pallares hot springs.

Think Geoenergy reports (May 24) that in Poland there are plans to enhance a geothermal source for bathing purposes:
'The town of Koluszki in Lodz Voivodeship of Poland is currently considering the use of potential geothermal resources either to put up a thermal bath facility or a district heating system. To this end, a team of experts from Iceland will be visiting the commune to assess the geothermal potential of the area'.
[Même journée, météo différentes] Ce jour là, j'ai commencé la journée en short, puis nue (eh oui, rien de mieux selon moi pour profiter pleinement 🫣) en pleine nature à profiter d'un bain chaud et de la fraîcheur de la rivière. Ici j'ai passé environ 5h, à lire, à ne rien faire, à jouer avec Wicket, à écouter les oiseaux et le bruit de l'eau vive. Puis j'ai décidé de partir pour une autre visite 10 kilomètres plus loin... Et là, j'ai eu le droit au sommet enneigées, à la neige et j'ai ressortie le gros poncho en laine 😅😆 Voilà, c'est le printemps et dans la même journée j'ai eu l'été et l'hiver ☀️❄️ mais peu importe, ces deux moments étaient beaux, agréable et doux 🙏🙏 PS: Si vous demandez son avis à Wicket, c'est la neige qu'il préfère #pyreneeorientales #girlwhohike #mountains #hotspring #granolagirl #snow #girlinnature #lumixgx9 #landscapephotography