Vacation report

[studentbane]

echoweaver and I are just back from a week in Germany and the Netherlands. It was a wonderful vacation and a great experience.

There will be a full exploration report on the travel blog eventually, with pix and stuff. But for the moment, some highlights:

• Mineral baths in Wiesbaden.
  
• Visiting echo's (third) cousin, also in Wiesbaden.
  
• The DFDF Filk

Comments

[studentbane]

I'm interested in hearing more about the baths at Wiesbaden.

Unfortunately, we didn't get any pix of the building. It was sort of a hodgepodge of Victorian neo-classical, pretending to be Roman, with touches of Twenty-first century chrome-and-class chic. Here's a tourist page on it, though.

The mechanics were pretty simple: At the entry, they gave you a coded wristband that you used to pay for any services. You dumped your clothes in a locker (coded by the wristband), showered, and then headed for the pools.

They had about 4 temperatures of pools, with the medium-temp pools having whirlpool jets and the cold pool right beside the hottest pool. The whole "alternate between v. hot and v. chilly pools" trick turns out to be pretty neat. It really does feel invigorating, in the sense that you can pretty much feel the capillaries in your skin expanding and contracting. Of course, their cold pool was still like 18 or 20 C, so we're not talking cold cold here.

They also had various temperature rooms for drying off/hanging out, a couple of different temperature saunas, etc. But it's a full-featured day spa, so you could buy various forms of massages, oil treatments, facials, and so on. They even had a snack bar, so that you never had to leave. All very cleverly coded to your wristband, so you could just ignore how much you were actually spending...

The socially interesting bit to us was that everything past the showers was strictly clothing free. Some people wrapped towels around them or had robes when out of the water, but others just walked around in the buff, and even sat at the snack bar nude. The social norm seemed to be that people kind-of acted studiously casual. That is, they kind-of glanced at each other, but avoided staring or even really acknowledging each other's presence.

One thing that we took away from it all is that we would probably all have healthier attitudes toward body shape if public nude bathing were a serious part of life. When you see that most people around you are far from Hollywood model body form, it's easier to realize that you're not that exceptional.

body image

[enochs_fable]

One thing that we took away from it all is that we would probably all have healthier attitudes toward body shape if public nude bathing were a serious part of life. When you see that most people around you are far from Hollywood model body form, it's easier to realize that you're not that exceptional.

I think you're probably right.

One thing I've always wondered is how American cinema is prettified, where with Europeans, while there are still plenty of beautiful people, there seems to be a wider range of permitted looks.