inspires a distinct way of life with its
own menu, accoutrements, appointed hour, ceremony, and ritual.
I lived with a Soviet TV journalist turned fiction writer turned tour guide named Irina. No patronymic, just Irina. According
to Irina, journalists shed their fathers' names in classless togetherness. Irina was a miniaturized aging Bond girl of the
Ursula Andress school, a petite blond with wide-set small brown eyes and cheeks that resembled split-open peaches. Twenty-five
years ago she must have been a knockout, and there was still an unmistakable feistiness in her eyes and the way she sashayed
around in her high-heeled black boots.
Irina had perfected the art of spin. When I stepped into her tiny fifth-floor walk-up apartment, hyperventilating and disoriented,
she greeted me with a Cheshire cat smile and the loud impersonal boom of a tour guide: 'Welcome to your beautiful home.' Of
course, I couldn't help but smile back, grateful to see my first friendly Russian face and to have a place at last to put
down my suitcase. I ignored the moldy beer factory smell and quickly slipped off my shoes, as the guidebooks instruct. But
the guidebooks also say your host will offer you slippers, and Irina didn't. I was stumped.
She toured me through the apartment, smiling like a delirious Vanna White: 'This is the kitchen, where I will serve you a
delicious breakfast every morning. Now come, I will show you to your beautiful room.' I followed her down the short, narrow
corridor with peeling rose-patterned wallpaper. 'And this is your wonderful room. Now I leave you to put away your things.'
I looked around my beautiful, wonderful room, with an old, fusty leather sofa you might find in a 1890s train station, dusty
bookcases, and a bed designed to produce instant insomnia. I flicked on the switch to the crooked chandelier. Only one bulb
illuminated. Thank God for white nights. I looked at the solid oak writing desk. Home office. Sweet. Then I looked at the
bed more closely: a one-inch-thick foam futon on top of a blue plastic frame. I sat down and the frame teetered and almost
buckled under my weight.
How did I end up in this person's home? I wondered to myself. It was disorienting for me to be here, but I imagined how scary
it must be for Irina to open her home to random foreigners. It's not as if the host organization that brokers these home stays
does any sort of background check on those of us drifting through Russia.
Irina bounced in and wanted to give a tutorial on locking the front door and using the bathroom. If there was ever a time
to be happy I was doing research on public baths, it was when I saw Irina's bathtub: small and stained reddish brown by the
rusty water. I knew my search for the perfect bath was not going to end in Irina's apartment. At first I took the water stains
as a good sign, a sure sign that there was indeed water, but when I saw the rate at which water trickled out of the faucet,
I realized it was a miracle that this tub had water stains at all.
My banya research must start straight away. The next morning, I showed Irina my list of St Petersburg banyas that I had heard
or read about (a dozen or so of the fifty-eight listed banyas in St Petersburg): Kruglye, Banya #50, Banya # 5 1 , Banya #24,
Banya #45, Nevskie, Yamskiye. During Soviet times, all banyas were state owned and operated and were identified by numbers
instead of jazzy names like the Comrade's Hot Rocks. Indeed, under the Soviets the banyas proliferated in much the same way
the Roman thermae had two thousand years before. Down at the Politburo, the Soviet leaders joked, just as the Romans had, that the decline and
fall of the Soviet empire was directly related to the explosion of banyas and the ensuing debauchery and heat-induced laziness.
The reason behind the 'banya for the masses' plan was quite simple: Going to the banya was a classless weekly pleasure enjoyed
by all Russians.
own menu, accoutrements, appointed hour, ceremony, and ritual.
I lived with a Soviet TV journalist turned fiction writer turned tour guide named Irina. No patronymic, just Irina. According
to Irina, journalists shed their fathers' names in classless togetherness. Irina was a miniaturized aging Bond girl of the
Ursula Andress school, a petite blond with wide-set small brown eyes and cheeks that resembled split-open peaches. Twenty-five
years ago she must have been a knockout, and there was still an unmistakable feistiness in her eyes and the way she sashayed
around in her high-heeled black boots.
Irina had perfected the art of spin. When I stepped into her tiny fifth-floor walk-up apartment, hyperventilating and disoriented,
she greeted me with a Cheshire cat smile and the loud impersonal boom of a tour guide: 'Welcome to your beautiful home.' Of
course, I couldn't help but smile back, grateful to see my first friendly Russian face and to have a place at last to put
down my suitcase. I ignored the moldy beer factory smell and quickly slipped off my shoes, as the guidebooks instruct. But
the guidebooks also say your host will offer you slippers, and Irina didn't. I was stumped.
She toured me through the apartment, smiling like a delirious Vanna White: 'This is the kitchen, where I will serve you a
delicious breakfast every morning. Now come, I will show you to your beautiful room.' I followed her down the short, narrow
corridor with peeling rose-patterned wallpaper. 'And this is your wonderful room. Now I leave you to put away your things.'
I looked around my beautiful, wonderful room, with an old, fusty leather sofa you might find in a 1890s train station, dusty
bookcases, and a bed designed to produce instant insomnia. I flicked on the switch to the crooked chandelier. Only one bulb
illuminated. Thank God for white nights. I looked at the solid oak writing desk. Home office. Sweet. Then I looked at the
bed more closely: a one-inch-thick foam futon on top of a blue plastic frame. I sat down and the frame teetered and almost
buckled under my weight.
How did I end up in this person's home? I wondered to myself. It was disorienting for me to be here, but I imagined how scary
it must be for Irina to open her home to random foreigners. It's not as if the host organization that brokers these home stays
does any sort of background check on those of us drifting through Russia.
Irina bounced in and wanted to give a tutorial on locking the front door and using the bathroom. If there was ever a time
to be happy I was doing research on public baths, it was when I saw Irina's bathtub: small and stained reddish brown by the
rusty water. I knew my search for the perfect bath was not going to end in Irina's apartment. At first I took the water stains
as a good sign, a sure sign that there was indeed water, but when I saw the rate at which water trickled out of the faucet,
I realized it was a miracle that this tub had water stains at all.
My banya research must start straight away. The next morning, I showed Irina my list of St Petersburg banyas that I had heard
or read about (a dozen or so of the fifty-eight listed banyas in St Petersburg): Kruglye, Banya #50, Banya # 5 1 , Banya #24,
Banya #45, Nevskie, Yamskiye. During Soviet times, all banyas were state owned and operated and were identified by numbers
instead of jazzy names like the Comrade's Hot Rocks. Indeed, under the Soviets the banyas proliferated in much the same way
the Roman thermae had two thousand years before. Down at the Politburo, the Soviet leaders joked, just as the Romans had, that the decline and
fall of the Soviet empire was directly related to the explosion of banyas and the ensuing debauchery and heat-induced laziness.
The reason behind the 'banya for the masses' plan was quite simple: Going to the banya was a classless weekly pleasure enjoyed
by all Russians.
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