Day 22: Kazan to Nizhny Novgorod

I arrived in Nizhney Novgorod at 7am.  I figured I'd get to my hostel and take a nap.  Wrong, so wrong.  I got all the lost one could get.  It was so cold out so I just kept taking all the trolleys and all the metros trying to get myself somewhere that appeared on my map.  Just so much fail.

Finally, FINALLY, I somehow with my magical brain figured out where I was and I got myself to the hostel.

After that fiasco and the rather long day I had, I decided that this was the day to try the Russian Banya.

What is the banya you ask?  The banya is a place where you go take off all of your clothes, sit in the hottest room imaginable until you can't take it anymore, and then you leave the hot room and beat the crap out of yourself with some branches soaked in hot water.  Sound crazy?  It is.

Nah, it's cool.  It's similar to the Korean Jimjilbang, but there are some serious differences.  One being that Russian women maintain their lady bits and Korean woman do not. (There is a reason for this and if you'd like to know, PM me).  

I went into the banya and had such a hard time because of the language barrier.  No one could understand what I wanted which was simply just to go to the banya.  They probably thought I was crazy because it's something only old Russian women do, and I'm a nutjob tourist.  I just figured it's such a Russian thing and I had to do it.  Anyway, we figured it out and there I was, a lone, young, thin tourist girl among old, overweight typical Russian ladies naked in a room together.

I really had no idea what I was doing or where I was supposed to go or in what order, but I just kinda guessed and I think I did it right.  I was definitely in a very very hot room for amounts of time.  I tried to hit myself with the branches but I felt like an idiot so I stopped.  It was relaxing though, in a very, uh, sweaty way.

Hey, I couldn't go to Russia and not go to the banya.