Originally Posted by
meFIRST
I'm sure I'm not alone. I consider a trip to the bath house or sauna a CRUTIAL and INTEGRAL part of any GAY-VAY (Gay Vacation) be it with friends or the boyfriend.
You are certainly not alone in that. I do not travel anywhere that doesn't have a sauna. Seriously. It's an important part of a travel experience. It's where I go in the evening after a day of touring the city. It's where I can meet local people in an environment that does not involve downing pints of beer.
Perhaps its because in New York, the bathouses are so sad, and in London, well...not that great.
Don't know about New York, but many saunas in the U.S. are quite fun places, especially the fabulous Steamworks in Chicago as you stated. Outside of the U.S., the most fun saunas that I've been to are in Montreal (SDP), London (Chariot on Shoreditch), Paris (ADM), Amsterdam (Thermos Day), Prague, Budapest, Rome, Brussells, Barcelona, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Copenhagen. Madrid was too quiet (I must have gone at the wrong time of day). In Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin, I thought that the Germans weren't terribly friendly.
My hometown Tel Aviv has two fun saunas too!
2. Badehause, Koln, Germany
I have made trips to Koln just to go here.
I'll be checking it out on February 23rd
Some saunas have nights with mixed crowd (men and women), and they're packed on those nights. It's not an exclusively gay thing. If straight people weren't so much more inhibited than gay people, they'd all go to saunas. We have nothing to be embarrassed about in the face of the rest of FT.