"There's Nothing Here!" 1. The culture of bathing has played a pivotal role in the history of civilization. Although it, the history of civilization, is rooted in wars, conquests, famous battles, and male heroics, there were those, like the old Romans, who left behind them something useful as well. Wherever they passed, Romans built public baths, Roman hot springs, and references to the goddess Minerva, whose name adorns many a hot-springs hotel. Turks, Arabs, the Islamic world, have given civilization public baths, hamamas, and made affordable to all the habit of bathing. Northern Europe has saunas or banyas or baths, the folk mythology of water, legends about miraculous cures and rejuvenation, mythical beings, river fairies, a whole water-bound imagination. The Russian banya is an inseparable part of Russian everyday life, but also a frequent motif in legends, fairy tales, and literature (Mayakovsky, Zoschenko), and in movies as well. The plot of Eldar Ryazanov's movie The Irony of Fate or Enjoy Your Bath! (1975), begins in a Russian bathhouse; in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises (2007) a London banya frequented by the Russian underworld serves as the site for brutal showdowns. Famous western European spa cities, such as Baden-Baden, were visited by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, while Karlovy Vary was a favorite haunt for Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, Peterthe Great, Turgenev, and, again, Tolstoy. Milan Kundera wasn't wrong when he set the plot of The Farewell Party--his little pearl of a novel--in a Czech spa. One way or another I keep stumbling over hot springs, even when my travels take me there for non-hot-springs reasons, such as when I was invited to the University of Warwick. While there, I explored the Royal Leamington Spa, active in the nineteenth century and visited twice by Queen Victoria herself. I visit hot springs for more reasons than just my bad back. While there I limber up my perceptive capabilities. Hot springs have a sobering and entrancing effect on me, not only do they confront me with my medical needs but with my social status, meanwhile fostering a feeling of general well-being, giving wings to the illusion that things are far better than they actually are. Abi Wright, an expert on the fast-expanding spa industry, claims that the price of a day at the spa runs from £20 to £2000. The clientele select their place in the social hierarchy. And right here, in this zone, the dynamic is the most intense. People (shall we call them hotspringers?) travel for many miles, as do the Croatian retirees who in semi-secrecy sneak off by bus to the Vrućica baths in the Serbian part of Bosnia and Herzegovina--Republika Srpska. The retiree-traitors pay the "despised" Serbs for spa services because the Bosnian Serb spas are cheaper and better in quality than the spas in Croatia. Spas are, therefore, a test of patriotism. When it comes to spas, patriotism gives way to frugality. There you have a detail which makes sense only to Croats and Serbs. The keys for entering one's password on ATMs in the Republika Srpska offer two language options: English or local. This, too, is something only local people understand. The language of the locals is dragon-tongue: it flicks its three equal tongues, Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian. And the entire modern complex of hot springs, known as Banja Vrućica, is dominated by an Orthodox shrine, one in a series of recently built, standard-form Orthodox, Muslim, and Catholic places of worship scattered across the landscape of Bosnia and Herzegovina, reminiscent of standard-form Chinese restaurants. 2. Why do I find myself drawn to hot springs? I enjoy playing the anthropologist on a clandestine mission: I watch the subtle flow of people and money where one least expects or notices it. The spas I have in mind were built on earlier Austro-Hungarian foundations (and these were raised on Roman spas), or they sprouted during the Socialist era. Most have not been recently renovated, or if they have, the renovation has been patchy. Many are now in ruins. They were occupied by war veterans from the most recent war (1991-1995) who--beset by alcohol, drugs, and troubles--vented their anger on the hot springs. Under the roofs of spas, the old communist utopia (the dream of highly professional, well-lit, and modern sanatoriums for all) stagnates and mingles with a dose of post-communist human despair, along with mildew festering on the tiles, and the yellowed hydro-massage baths. I read the things around me differently than does the spa staff, postcommunist kids, those cute humanoids whose memory cards have been erased. I'm older than they are and, though I may have no proof, I know a second level lies beneath the surface, and beneath the second there's a third . . . In the time of Yugoslavia, rivers of Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians, Serbs, and Macedonians with aching bones streamed to a sanatoriumknown as the Dr. Simo Milosević Institute in the Montenegrin coastal town of Igalo. Everything was paid for with wanton abandon (or so they say today) by the Yugoslav health insurance system. The institute is an imposing edifice of Yugoslav socialist architecture with probably the largest hotel lobby in the region, and a certain number of capacious hotel rooms, but the place is equipped with a disproportionately small swimming pool. Nowadays, the building excites both admiration and pity, as do all examples of neglect, especially the neglect that followed the fall of Communism and the advent of the misconstrued democracy. The vestiges of the communist era, along with the Adriatic Sea and its affordability, attract the elderly Norwegians, Danes, and Dutch, while the sanatorium staff has been holding their breath in hopes, for years, that the facility would be purchased by a wealthy Norwegian and transformed into a high-priced, classy wellness center. The character of Dr. Skréta, a spa gynecologist, (in Kundera's The Farewell Party), who dreams of being adopted by Bertlef, a filthy rich American, is in fact a precise anticipatory metaphor for today's post-communist Europe. Post-communist Europe seesitself as a swanky wellness center frequented by an assortment of rich men who have nothing better to do than satisfy the fantasies of the locals and adopt them once and for all. Igalo is a destination not merely for Scandinavians with aching bones, but also for the poorer class of Russians. The crassly wealthy Russians have been buying land up on the Montenegrin mountainsides where they build lavish mansions with bird's-eye views of the sea. The poorer Russians meanwhile buy modest apartments in unsightly Socialist high-rises. I met a Russian woman, an elderly lady, and her son. They'd purchased one of those little apartments and spend every summer in Igalo. After the Russians bought the Karlovy Vary spa in the Czech Republic and conquered with cash what they'd failed to conquer earlier with tanks, after they turned Montenegro into their resort and the proud Montenegrins into their waitstaff, money launderers, bodyguards, and the like--they moved on in a northwesterly direction and occupied Rogaska Slatina, a Slovenian spa. The Yugoslavs were, long ago, united by brotherhood and unity; now, or so it seems, they are united by the Russians. In vain Tito did declare his historical "no" to Stalin. Today, post-Yugoslavs are mouthing a willing "yes" to capital from Putin's offspring. How do I know? In September 2016, I stayed for five days at the Rogaska Grand Hotel, which had been purchased by a wealthy Russian. It should be said that the new owner invested not a cent in renovations. The only novelty were the Russian channels on the TV sets in the guestrooms. Over my five days there I watched my fill of Russian TV and learned that the visible, superficial glow of the "western" style of life is easy to imitate. After Perestroika and the fall of the wall, even the most backward Russian "country hick," such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky, learned that one must re-design oneself, have a good dentist, hairdresser, plastic surgeon, optician, brand-name attire, and a personal trainer, and package up one's personal Perestroika. This is something all the offspring of post-communist know. The Croatian president, Kolinda Grabar Kitarović, knows it. Her sudden surge in political popularity can be attributed to the fact that she successfully shed excess pounds,and that, as far as fashion is concerned, she closely follows Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City. While watching Russian TV, I discovered that the hard-core, censored, Soviet Communist television program was incomparably better in quality than today's "uncensored" variety. Today, as from everywhere else, raw uncensored stupidity seeps from Russian TV channels. Russian guests enjoy strolling around swathed in white terrycloth robes while obediently sipping the vapid mineral water. At the neighboring hotel, the Donat (named for the mineral water bottled there), the visitors are each given their own water mug with their personal number, and then, mug in hand, they enter the glassed-in temple dedicated to the mineral water goddess, DonatMg, known fondly as Lady Donat. The Russians enjoy this collective religious rite through which they pay homage to the anti-obstipational mineral, Magnesium the Great. One's personal mug with its special number costs seven euros a day; outside the "temple" there are places where the same water can be had for free. In front of the Donat stands a monument to Slovenian communist Boris Kidrič, organizer of the Slovenian anti-Fascist resistance during the German occupation. Kidrič is hip-deep in the marble pedestal, as if he's sinking in quicksand. One of his arms is lowered, the other raised, exactly as if he were holding a mug of Lady Donat and toasting someone. His hand, however,is holding nothing; hotel guests often tuck a posy of wildflowers into this hand, the one clasping the non-existent mug. The Boris Kidrič statue serves as proof that the far-sighted Slovenes are not as destructive toward their anti-fascist monuments as are the fervid Croats, especially if the dead anti-fascists can serve as a mug-holder or a vase or stir nostalgic sentiments in potential real-estate clients or solvent guests. Excerpted from Age of Skin by Dubravka Ugresic All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
