Sapareva Banya, Bulgaria
June 1, 2006
I feel much better after a two day stay in Sapareva Banya, this small town at the foothills of the Rila Mountains. The sky is clear, a buzzing hovers over the bushes, and the cafes are plentiful. Often, I get the feeling that each tiny cafe is the sole territory of a handful of friends, who can be spotted at their chosen establishment a good part of the day, more so in the evening, and well into the starry night. These men and woman charge the air around them with ceaseless cigarette smoke and the smell of acacia brandy. There must be a never-ending supply of everything they need right in the café, somehow though, I doubt they purchase much. (Here are people who know the value of social capital)
Every eight seconds the geyser down the street spits a steamy stream twenty meters high against blue-green mountain hills and a bit of the empty sky above them. In the same park, not even fifteen meters away from the geyser, there is a children’s park, and why shouldn’t there be?
Yesterday, Danila and I visited Sapareva’s banya, or Sapareva’s bath house, for the second time since we arrived here from the Rila Monastary, ravenous and ill two days ago, on a Monday evening; and though my body still suffers from our escapade in the mountains, the region’s plentiful sulfurous waters have most likely cut my recovery time in half.
Now I should say that Sapareva Banya is no spa in the Western Resort sense, but is rather a low-key treasure, encased in what our travel guide called an uninspiring cement structure from the Soviet era. Sapareva’s is a banya where the townspeople go to wash themselves in thorough cleansing rituals.
Our first afternoon in town we limped from our eight Lev a night (cheaper than cheap) apartment half a mile down the road, heading away from the boastful geyser and the dusty center of Sapareva Banya. A circular courtyard, where all shone stone white in the low sitting sun welcomed us to the banya house. At its far end we bought admittance tickets with the loose change in our pockets. The tickets looked like those little prize tickets you get when the carnival comes to visit your town in New Jersey.
Past the double doors, Danila and I were motioned to go our separate ways for the first time in a long while. Through another door I went, and coming through I was greeted by two ladies, between whom the bond of years was nearly visible. It was dim where they sat, but their white nurse coats, red cheeks, and chestnut hair shone with the warmness of the sun. I could tell that they stopped in mid conversation on my arrival. After thinking for a moment about my next move, it became obvious that I should get naked.
A white tiled room with overflowing water basins- like deep sinks- around its edges, a large square pool of hot hot water, and swirling currents of steam in the middle towards the back. To my great surprise, I was alone. I couldn’t tell what the basins were for, so I headed straight into the sulfurous bath. Sitting there felt nice, but I got sleepy and lazy after fifteen minutes and scrambled out of the tub and back into the changing room.
The banya ladies were still there, sitting in the corner. The only difference was that now they were eating bread onto which they lathered a pinkish spread. As I changed back into my dirty clothes, I could feel them watching me. What curious creatures these Bulgarians are. I went to sit by them after one of them had beckoned for me to get closer. One asked me if the man with me was my husband, and the older one implored that I eat a sandwich, suggesting that I need to start eating a lot more sandwiches in the future.
They wanted to know where we were coming from. In my best Russo-Bulgarian, I told them how my travel partner and I never made it to the Ivan Vazov Hut, and described the medieval shack we huddled for warmth in, somewhere 1,000 meters about the tree-line of the Rila Mountains. They shook their heads in what I thought was disbelief, later to find out that shaking in Bulgaria means yes, I sympathize with you, of course, while nodding means no no, absolutely not, I don’t believe you. And concerning this matter, I do not think that even if I was here for five years could I reprogram myself to nod no and shake yes. This, I can assure my reader, has been a source of constant misunderstanding and some subsequent laughter. What in the world happened in Bulgaria to have caused this reversal of cultural norms?
I bid goodbye to my dear ladies after two sandwiches, and went out to the courtyard, where I assumed Danila was waiting, but ended up being the one to wait. I sat on a stone bench for half-an-hour reading in the setting sun. It was nice. When Danila came out he was beaming and the Russian salutary phrase “s lyohkim parom” (meaning “with light steam”- said upon the occasion of someone coming out of a bath) could not have celebrated his renewal enough. Apparently, he had shared his bathing time with a substantial company of men, some of which he even got to know. One man in particular had taken quite a liking to him, and spent many words convincing our already dreaming selves to go have one drink with him. Naturally, we went to a cafe. Soon enough, he spent more words convincing us to have a second drink.
Sergei Dimitriyev is a toothless drunk. He has eight brothers and three sons. He used to mine coal in Russia. He thinks Russian women are the most “hubov” in the world. He tells us that he plays the trumpet, and admires a Russian businessman that owns the hotel down the street for being a decent person. Sergei told us that we should drink mastika and have hubov sex. He offered us a place to stay and made me recall other instances of generosity that we had so far encountered. Our first day in Sophia an old lady caught Danila and I standing by a pay-phone and offered us her phone card. Once, a lady offered me a bite of her pizza as we waited for the bus. Then there are all those rides we’ve been offered. And there was that time yesterday in the banya, when a lady offered to scrub my back after I had scrubbed hers upon her request. But alas, I did not bring any wash rag with me and wasn’t about to use hers.
The second evening at the banya was a different experience, what with all the women there. In the banya itself, the air was thick with steam and I could barely see the room as I walked through the door. In the haze, I made out many large slow moving bodies and two smaller ones that darted from wall to wall. The latter were two young girls, who were finally caught by their mother and aunt. In loving hands, they wriggled and yelped as they were soaped and combed.
Along the walls, five sinks overflowed with continuous floods of mineral water. This eve, however, there was a woman or two by each deep watering hole. Some were lathering soap over their limbs, while others poured water over their backs from small bowls. I watched them in awe, and then did as they did. After a considerable time cleaning I went to the large bath and sat submerged. There I did stretches to ease my pains and was content to watch the women bathe themselves and each other. Over by the showers, the young mother had one foot up on a stool and was shaving her private areas. This did not strike me as strange at all. Before leaving, I spoke with her for some time, and as my hand was pushing the changing room door open she said, “Good-bye Lea,” from her sitting spot in the bath. Her youngsters could no longer be seen in the white cloud.
In the changing room, a little ancient lady was the first naked Bulgarian soul I saw clearly. She was hunched over and flushed red. Her breasts hung long over her protruding belly as she walked over to her locker. She was wrinkled from her bath and from life.
On the bench in the middle of the room sat a small robed boy who played with a doll as he sang a soft happy tune. With a white linen hood pulled over his little noggin, he never once looked up to take in what he will soon be denied access to. He was engrossed in his own private post-bath world with his doll on what imaginary plane I could not really know. All I knew is that he wasn’t seeing what I was– youth and old age, the male and the female, the private and the public displayed together like the yin and the yang, freely and naturally ignoring and celebrating each other.
