“There’s a saying in Russia,” says Alona Krug, owner of the Brooklyn Banya (the Russian word for steam bath). “If a banya couldn’t cure you, you’re terminally ill.” It’s a tangible sentiment at many ...
The Russian communal bathhouse, or banya, where people are steamed at extreme heat, beat each other with birch branches, and then jump into cold water or snow, has struck many observers as a foretaste ...
On the day Michael Uspenski and I met, we slapped each other with brooms of oak branches. The practice, called platza, is a therapeutic treatment traditionally performed in a Russian sauna known as a ...
Nothing is ever easy in Moscow. The language mercilessly inflicts oil-and-water combinations of consonants like the k-v in kvartira, the word for “apartment.” Left turns virtually don’t exist, neither ...
In Russia, the legendary fierce winter starts to seem endless around this time of year. That helps explain Russians' abiding love for a central part of life — the sauna baths they call the banya. On ...
The needle on the thermometer in the sauna hovered over 200 degrees. It was like being in a pizza oven. The next step was plunging into a freezing pool. Going from boiling hot to stinging cold is part ...
NEW YORK -- What does it say about a culture when one of its most honored rituals involves thrashing the body? Can we read it as a symbol of harsh Russian life, or does it speak more to a mentality -- ...
KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia (AP) ''What's the score?'' asks Svetlana Fedorenko as she enters a bathhouse in the Caucasus Mountains with her husband and friends: The U.S.-Russia hockey game was on, and ...
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