The Sauna Diaries

The Sauna Diaries

The sauna at the Bondi Icebergs reopened today. Every year it closes for a week and all of the rotting timbers get replaced. The downtime is very disconcerting for locals who use that sauna on a daily basis. Swimming in 16 degree water becomes more challenging when it doesn’t happen at the end of a hot’n’sweaty session.

Anyway, all’s well that ends well, and the sauna is back in business!

You see many of the same people at the Bondi Icebergs Pool in the mornings, and the sauna is the venue for much heated discussion. Every morning there’s a different combination of people, so you never really know who or what you’re going to get. Some topics are recurrent. Popular topics include: the vaccination debate, the fluoridation of water, various conspiracy theories, miracle foods, yoga positions, the merits of pouring water onto the coals (I’m on the “steam team” for this one), politics, music, ethnicity (many represented in there, lots of Eastern Europeans), and so on … It’s interesting to see how strangers open up when sitting nearly naked and sweating in a small room with a view to the horizon. And it’s a wonderfully social start to the day for people who tend to spend a lot of time working freelance at home.