along with the Olympus E-410 set i bought in the beginning of the year we've got a voucher for an overnight stay in a participating hotel in Europe. It had been months now and we have finally made up our mind to use it, and this weekend we took time out to just leave the town, and allow ourselves to enjoy the break away.

In the same building of the hotel there is also a wellness center, where you have swimming pools, sauna area and fitness studio services. I was thinking, if it is going to cost almost the same as in Kassel, why not give us a treat for a few hours of nice relaxing wellness experiences. It turned out that the hotel offers a good day pass offer - instead of paying around 4-5Euros per hour, it costs 6€ for a day pass. Well it is too good an offer to be turned down, so we got ourselves 2 passes and went ahead after a nice simple Vietnamese beef noodle lunch.

At the place, we first went to the sauna area. We have actually picked up "more serious" sauna here in Europe, where you actually do the hot-cold-rest cycle in order to enjoy the benefit. So what people do here is to first take a 12-15 minutes round of sauna at >90°C (there are also 80+ ones, but i think only more than 90 is considered as "sweat-inducing"). Immediately after sauna one should cool himself down with either a dip in a almost ice-cold pool, or a cold shower. And without delay you should then wrap yourself up and lay down to rest. At this time you will probably feel your body expanding due to the hot-cold switch. The effect we learnt here is the relaxing feel we will get. Some might even choose to doze off a little, which is not exactly a bad idea at all.

As soon as you feel your body temperature returns to normal again, it is time for another round of sauna. We have read in Finland you actually do this next to the lake, and you are suppose to jump into the lake to cool yourself down (or in winter, dig a hole in the lake or wrap yourself with snow). We find that challenging and not something we must definitely try :). But at home i have never thoght there are different ways of doign sauna. we usually just go in and sweat ourselves and think that is all we need to do. In different countries you even have different customs.  I have heard the fins drink beer and eat bbq sausages in sauna. In some of the countries sauna is mixed with aroma therapy (i think) where different aromas are used together at the "aufguss" session. It does help sauna visitors to relax and enjoy the effects brought by such mixtures.

Besides sauna we went to the pool too. Dipping in water was just relaxing and nice. It was relatively empty for a saturday evening, though for us it was just nice. Imagine if you are in a wellness center and all you see are sardined packed pools. We stay all in all around 4 hours before we return to our hotel room. Dinner was just simple - we got ourselves some "summerrolls" (vietnamese non-fried popiah i would call it) and a simple small sald from McD. well, why eat too much after a relative healthy day? :D

The next day we slept til almost 10, an hour before breakfast ends. Being able to sleep enough and wake up late seemed to be a luxury nowadays. Breakfast was good - they serve quite a good variety of normal stuffs - from warm omelette to cold cuts and cereals. A pleasant surprise was an asian corner, where japanese miso soup and rice plus other ingredients can be found. Wifey enjoyed it so much that she took 3 rounds of rice soup combination. Since this was our breakaway, we just took our time while enjoying the breakfast (me with my cappucino/latte machiatos).

while typing this on our way back to Kassel, i wondered whether can we have such relaxing moments even when we are in our normal daily lives. I thi nk the answer should be yes. If breakaways are suppose to "force" you to be away from your daily busyness, then the key to such rest and relaxness should be a reexamination of our lifestyle. I start to believe there is always something to be done. If we don't get out of the normal cycles in our lives, we will just get stucked in it. But if we understood the rhythms and things to come, i think with a break or not, we will still live the same. Of course, it does not then mean we should just do nothing and stack things up. It is a mean to rest enough, while doing the normal stuffs efficiently.

It would be a challenge for me now to see how we can figure this out. Let's see how things work out for us. :)