Friday 29 October 2010

Day 40 Austria & Germany 28/10/2010 Peuerbach. No Bicycles only cars and feet!

We both had a long lay in and then a nice leisurely breakfast. The morning was spent trying to plan our forthcoming route and catching up with emails etc.

After a lovely light lunch prepared by Brigitte (Franz's wife) Franz took us to some thermal baths in Bad Füssing, Germany to soak away our aches and pains. As the main sauna area was all nude, we became very acquainted with more naked Germans than we could possibly imagine! Rather strangely you then had to put on a swimming costume to go through to the swimming area. As Franz pointed out, they were all the same people who had been in the other section.

Unlike the last baths we had visited this was the real thing, with lots of hot pools one of which was 43°C and too hot to stay in for long. The saunas were lovely although we couldn't stay in the 90°C room that Franz liked. Clearly you need lots of years of conditioning for that kind of heat. While Franz went for one last visit in the hot room, we settled for the cooler Kartoffel (potato) sauna. We timed it right, or wrong depending on your thoughts on greased up naked Germans, to be given some butter exfoliant to use whilst in the sauna. We followed the lead of everyone else and rubbed it on ourselves and then wondered what we were supposed to do next. Still unsure, we went to the showers to wash it off, some of the others seemed to follow our lead while some strolled around outside all oiled up. Perhaps that was why it was called the potato sauna, as I felt like a new potato that had been rolled in butter!

Feeling much more relaxed, we left the baths and stopped in the pretty town of schärding for a well deserved beer on the way home. When we got home Brigitte had made a lovely goulash, which was just what we needed after a strenuous day of doing very little! More beer, wine and conversation rounded off a lovely day.

No comments:

Post a Comment