I go to the sauna regularly for over 30 years now. My parents have a Finish electric dry sauna at home in Germany. Also we did vacation in Finland regularly. An

I go to the sauna regularly for over 30 years now. My parents have a Finish electric dry sauna at home in Germany. Also we did vacation in Finland regularly. And I lived in Finland for a year. Sometime in the 90ties, saunas became quite common in Germany for some reason. Initially it was only some single saunas in addition to some fun pool. Later that expanded to more and more saunas, and then we got whole sauna areas with 10-20 different saunas, and they became very common. We have many of such places now in every bigger city. Those sauna areas have lots of events like putting water with different herbs on the hot stones every 30 minutes in different saunas, where you also get fresh fruits, drinks or other things. These 10-20 saunas cover all common styles like Finish, Russian, Turkish, and many others. We also have a sauna at our university in Germany (probably also not really uncommon). It's not just very relaxing. Which by itself is already very nice. Esp also after some extensive sport session. But it's also a very nice social event. At the university, it's always nice to chat with lots of different people. When I lived in Finland (Erasmus), we also had a sauna at our student hostel, and basically every other place as well. It was always a regular event. It's also interesting to see the cultural differences. In Germany, everyone is naked, and the atmosphere varies a lot, depending where you go. Often it's quiet (more expensive public places), sometimes it's chatty (e.g. university), sometimes it can be annoying (cheap public places). In Finland, you also have public saunas, but nothing like these big sauna areas like in Germany. It's usually 1-3 saunas, and you wear swimming trunks. The student hostel sauna was probably a bit special due to the Erasmus students. Sometimes we went with other Finish students to their private saunas. They usually put lots of water on the hot stones. I also visited a friend once in Russia in Yekaterinburg. We also went to sauna a lot with other local friends of him, and also in our hotel. Russians put even much more water on the hot stones, and usually stay shorter in it (10 minutes or so), but make it hotter, and go more often. That was just my experience.