WHAT Parenie (£28) and Russian massage (£35 for 30 minutes) WHERE Banya No.1, London, gobanya.co.uk THE LOWNDOWN Russian Banya is a full experience, not an in-out treatment, so if you’re in a rush, save this for another dy. After a relaxing cup of tea, you’ll be laid down in a steam room where the therapist uses birch, oak […]
Hanging out at a Rainbo event a few months ago my beautiful friend Alice told me she and her husband Pete were going on a hot date that evening to a Russian spa “where you wear and felt hat and they beat you with birch leaves”. Sign me up! I cried, and the next week […]
Kate Weinberg is massaged with twigs at a Russian bathhouse Photo: Paul Grover Banya involves being hit by branches and having a bucket of icy water chucked over your head. Kate Weinberg visits a bathhouse in London. It’s 9pm. I am lying face down on a wooden slab in a hot room, musing on how […]
I spent my gap year in Moscow learning Russian. With not a jot of the language to get by on and taken aback by the freezing weather, my world shrunk to calendar-watching and English-language books. It was a difficult experience by most measures. I stayed for the winter and left in spring when the snow […]
It’s rare to experience both excitement and fear before a spa day, but Banya No.1, London’s foremost – and indeed only – Russian Spa, is a bit of a special case. I was really looking forward to experiencing an authentic banya, but I was also afraid of being stripped naked, beaten senseless with birch logs and thrown […]