The bathing culture within the cities tended to over-complicate the simple nature discussed above, which correlates with the general ways of city vs country living in Sweden. There is a return to the luxurious over simple functionality like in the UK, for example: at the Central Badet in Stockholm you are able to dine in your white dressing gown with champagne. The facilities take from varying world forms of bathing with the main feature akin of a traditional Roman baths, with multiple heated rooms around warm water pools. You also have a wooden sauna and a tiled steam room, taken from the traditional Finnish saunas and Turkish Hammam. Even though this is common from our experience with spas and leisure centres in the UK it still feels like a catering for all, like a restaurant that serves world buffet. It is a distance away from the origins of the simple hut. In the beautiful building of the Central Badet you become very aware of the division between yourself and the connection to nature, the brick walls and compulsory swimwear builds a barrier between your skin and the wind.
The Valhalla Badet in Gothenburg is a familiar leisure centre set-up. The sauna in a more secondary function to be used after exercise at the gym or swimming. This is closer to how the UK uses the sauna: to relax the muscles (which it certainly does) but misses the key function – to cleanse. There is an etiquette to taking a sauna and many of the reasons are centred around cleanliness, for example: wearing flip flops on your feet or having a towel to sit on while in the sauna to collect one’s sweat or showering before entering the sauna.
