Sunday Hamam - Going Back to the Well

Why not treat guests from a heralded sauna culture such as Estonia to Baku's finest 300-yr old hamam?

My thoughts exactly. Julian and I were honoured to treat our Estonian counterparts to some serious "sweaty old men" time. "This kind of thing doesn't happen in Estonia," they said, "We all have private saunas."

Ok, so we all can't be lucky enough to live in a country where business meetings and contract negotiations take place in saunas, so you just have to take what you can get. In this case the Estonians and I found ourselves face down on the massage table getting punished by a guy who has way to much fun inflicting pain on people.

I've never been scrubbed down so hard in my life. Any dirt leftover from India, any spec of air pollution from Egypt, and any garlic smell from dinner the night before was surely obliterated. The massage wasn't so bad, either. I just wish he would've worked the lower back a lot more.

Julian will be guest hamam'ing in Turkey next week, so applications are now being collected for next Sunday at one of the two new hamams we have discovered. Anyone want to fly in for the weekend?