If you are a Russian-speaking person, then don’t answer because it’s too easy for you.
Now the question: what are the people in the photo doing and why? (Hint: “diving into the snow” and “because they are weird” are not good answers.)
Oh, I wish I could join them right now!
They probably should have cancelled the watersports festival due to inclement weather, but everyone already had hotel reservations.
LikeLike
Getting cooled off after a stay in the Russian equivalent of sauna in the same manner as Nordic people do?
LikeLike
Enjoying themselves in a hot spring
LikeLike
Doing the hot/cold cardiovascular therapy thing?
LikeLike
Yes, Pika and FD! These people have run out of the “bania”, the Russian equivalent of a sauna (the wooden structure in the background) and jumped into the snow to cool off.
LikeLike
Been there, done that. When I was in Massage Therapy school that was part of our hydrotherapy class. Talk about an endorphin buzz, I guess some Russians prefer that to their vodka. 😉
LikeLike
No, this is supposed to be combined with vodka.
LikeLike
I was gonna say, “Building a Snow Castle” but I guess that’s not it.
LikeLike
When I first saw this picture it reminded me of how the geothermically-heated waters from hot springs have therapeutic and uses for bathing. Although, as the comments above indicate, this is not the case, people doing such in Russia wherever there happened to be hot springs (Kamchatka, maybe?) and then jumping into the snow to cool down made me think that was what was happening.
LikeLike
They don;t even need hot springs. There is a little wooden sauna on wheels right behind them and the sauna can travel to any area. 🙂
LikeLike
Sauna followed by roll in the snow (variant: dive in the lake). Swedes and Finns do it too. Some Americans join Polar Bear clubs – go swimming in the local freezing body of water on New Year’s Day. That’s more of an Upper Midwest thing, perhaps a carryover from the Nordic immigrant population.
Warning: do not do this if you have a cerebral aneurysm or any history of high blood pressure. The systolic blood pressure IN HEALTHY YOUNG men can go well over 200 mmHg. I remember watching a film of a young man wearing a blood pressure monitor with transducer, saunaing and then diving into a lake frozen at the edges. All those nicely relaxed blood vessels in the person enjoying the sauna suddenly contract on skin contact with ice water.
LikeLike
A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
Leave a comment