KissSalis Therme

_MAL3071, originally uploaded by Michael A. Lowry.

Saturday morning I accompanied Andrea & Karim on a trip to the Neubert home furnishings store in Würzburg, where they looked at couches and entertainment center furniture for their living room.

The weather was unpleasant. It was a few degrees above freezing, windy, and raining. Andrea told me about a bath located about 45 minutes away by car, so I suggested we spend the afternoon there. The weather became progressively worse as we drove to Bad Kissingen, so I was glad we hadn't decided to spend the day walking around in the city.

KissSalis Therme is a large and modern thermal bath similar to Caracalla Therme, a bath in Baden Baden that I visited while backpacking around Europe in the summer of '92. There main area of the bath is devoted to two indoor-outdoor pools and several relaxation & aromatherapy rooms. The "Sauna Park" area in the back has at least half a dozen different saunas, a couple of steam baths, an a few more relaxation rooms. Like at Caracalla, swimsuits are required in the pool area, but not allowed in sauna area. Germans are pretty darned comfortable with nakedness.

Outside, behind the main building were three wood cabin saunas that could only be reached by walking out into the cold rainy weather. My favorite was the Finnish sauna, built in the shape of an octagon, with a wood-fired heater in the center. There was something quite magical about sitting in the darkened sauna, watching the flames of the fire dance and cast their orange glow on the log walls.

After a few hours of swimming and sitting in the various saunas I got a brush massage. It was quite a different experience from a traditional massage. With traditional massage, the muscles get most of the attention, but with a brush massage, its the skin. The masseuse used two wooden brushes with soft plastic bristles, plus lots of soapy warm water. I lay on a heated green marble table for the massage. I get the idea that this sort of massage is intended to clean and exfoliate.

After leaving the bath, we had dinner in the adjoining café. The food there wasn't very good, but we were hungry and it was at least filling.