Bring the steam, bring the heat!
As commonly known, Russians indulge in the old tradition of slapping or massaging oneself or each other with birch twigs, which supposedly fosters the blood circulation in your body. Depending on the season, you use freshly picked or dried birch twigs (these ones you got to soak in water first to make them soft again, plus you can pour that same water over the oven stones). The soaked twigs especially don’t hurt but actually feel rather pleasant indeed. Notably, birch is only the most popular type of tree but you can use a large variety of other types as well, such as oak, eucalyptus, linden or maple, which then also have different effects (cleansing your skin by opening pores, disinfecting, anti-inflammation, etc.).
When you’re done with sweating and washing and leave the washing room, you’ll be greated by the traditional “С лёгким паром,” meaning something along the lines of “with light steam.” In other words, you leave the banya relaxed, recovered and liberated from the worries you went in with (and which you will probably be facing again now).
All in all, we had a nice weekend with loads of food, drinks, talks and banya. Apparently, it’s not that much different in public banyas where you can usually find restaurants to rest and talk about anything and everything during breaks or afterwards. But whether the banya is really being used for striking and cementing business deals, I have to find out another time.