Hitting up the naked German spa...

Now that I’ve got your attention! Yeah, you heard right, I spent my day Saturday at the spa in Baden-Baden, Germany with Mika, Lex, Natalie and Sue. We decided we needed to start midterm week off in style. Of coure I wake up Saturday morning to snow on the ground--the first snow fall since we last left for Italy for Spring Break a month ago.

Thanks to Mika’s German skills, we scored a 6 euro roundtrip train from Kehl to Baden-Baden and then a 10-minute bus to Caracalla Spa. We had each pre-booked a 4-hour spa pass and a massage and were all pumped for a girls’ day of pampering and relaxation.

I can’t even describe this place because there’s really nothing like it in the U.S. Check out the website if you want to see pictures, it’s pretty incredible. A huge pool with fountains and smaller Jacuzzis fills the main floor of the spa which leads to the outdoor pools. Lawn chairs, heat lamps, solarium tanning rooms, a salt-water pool, steam and aroma rooms, big circular lounge beds, and the massage relaxation center all make up the peripheral. Mika’s 50-minute facial and massage (later found out to be a full frontal, full nude mud massage) started right when we got there. I had about 15 minutes before my less risqué, traditional back massage began. I’ve been bribing Mika and Alexis for massages for the past 2 months with Toblerone and Haribo gummy bears; I guess it was about time I finally paid for a real one. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but damn was it good.

We felt like royalty eating penne pomodoro pasta and vanilla milkshakes on the pool deck, charging everything to our tab with our nifty electronic wrist bands. The dress code at the spa doesn’t especially allow for easy storage of cash or credit cards…

After a short pep talk, all five of us decided to make the bold move upstairs to the completely nude Roman bath floor where the saunas were. HELLO! These people had NO shame. And I mean NO shame. 70+ year old men, women well over 200 pounds just hanging out up there. No big deal.

We grabbed our towels, and split up to make our awkward laughs and whispers a little less obvious. Mika and I grabbed a sauna and de-robed. All was well until a group of 6 Asian men walked in and decided to sit down in between us. Boy did we have fun trying to keep straight faces. We left and made our way outside in the snow to the large outdoor saunas. The only thing we didn’t try were the naked lounge beds and the nude hot and cold tubs. Nope, still not regretting that decision.

I sat down to the finest glass of fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice I think I’ll ever have. It was all good until I started getting a little queasy from all the “eye candy.” It was time to head back down to the pool area.

I spent the last hour in the outdoor pool, lazy river and spa acting like a naughty 6-year old jumping off of the mushroom fountain doing “seal flops” into the pool and trying to swim against the current. Yeah, I was “that special American girl.” I really didn’t care. It was the first time I’d been in a pool in over 3 months and damn did it feel good. The snow just made it perfect.

Confession: When I got home Saturday night, I didn’t shower because I didn’t want to lose the chlorine smell I had missed for so long. I contemplated not taking a shower again Sunday, but decided after exchanging god-knows-what bodily fluids with a bunch of sketchy Europeans at the spa, it probably was best to wash myself.

All in all, an incredibly relaxing (and European) day. In fact, on the way back from our trip to Dublin in two weeks, Mika and I are going to spend a few hours at the spa again, since our flight gets in to Baden-Baden at noon. Now if I can only make it through midterms this week…