Tampere. Rajaportti
This post is a part of a mini series describing my sauna-centered road trip across Southern Finland.
Rajaportti. The Oldest Public Sauna in Finland #
(Almost) everyone who is into saunas and Finland knows about Rajaportti sauna, built at the beginning of the 20th century.
As they say officially state:
Finland’s oldest still-functioning public sauna.
I have no interest in repeating information that everyone can easily find on their website or elsewhere on the internet, so I’ll limit myself to my own impressions and experience.
I was in the changing room, undressing. It was relatively full of visitors in their forties to sixties, “actively” resting after being in the steam room: they were drinking beer and throwing an empty plastic bottle at each other. A guy next to me dodged the next throw, and the bottle hit me. No harm done, no hard feelings, and everyone genuinely laughed.
This was a good example of the atmosphere in a proper public sauna, where people who don’t know each other don’t necessarily throw objects at each other but are definitely equal, relaxed, and have a sense of community.
Rajaportti sauna has two rather compact steam rooms—one for each gender. A very typical setup for public saunas in Finland, Russia, and other countries in the region.
As for this particular sauna, I heard that it was originally mixed-gender, but at some point, the city of Tampere issued a law prohibiting such practices. I’m not sure if this is true, but at least this is what one of the fellow bathers told me while I was there. If you can prove or refute this, please drop me a message.
The stove is powerful, as you often encounter in older public saunas, and it produces nice and pleasant steam.
There is also a very pleasant, secluded yard where one can rest and chat about anything with fellow bathers, who often happen to be complete strangers.
A side note:
In public bathhouses, I usually don’t hear or engage too often in discussions related to politics—people tend to avoid “heavier” topics in these spaces. However, while writing this, I realized that in Finland, it’s not the case. Quite the opposite—such topics are quite popular in and around steam rooms.
For example, while at Rajaportti, I had an engaging chat about an ongoing war. The guy who was about to leave even went for another round in the steam room just to continue the conversation.
Once done with bathing, I dressed, sat in the onsite cafeteria to cool down, ate a snack, and skimmed through a few sauna books from the impressive collection they have on the shelves. After that, I drove back to where I was staying to rest before the big day ahead of me.
Side story: Lepaa Manor. Unplanned Peasant Encounter #
My general rule for road trips is to never book accommodation in advance since you never know where you’ll end up in the evening. This rule generally works, but as always, there are exceptions.
This time, some kind of event in the city had brought a lot of outsiders to the area, straining hotel capacities and leaving me with very few reasonably priced options for the night.
As a result, I ended up staying at a charismatic manor some 50+ kilometers outside the city, at the price of a bed in a 12-bed dorm in the city center.
You are thinking there must be another reason why I mentioned this in a sauna post, aside from advising to check for big events in the area you’re visiting. And there is—a smoky one.
During my evening stroll in the vast area surrounding the manor, I stumbled upon a beautiful savusauna (smoke sauna). It wasn’t in great shape, as you can see in the pictures, but it was still a pleasant discovery, especially considering that next day, I would be
visiting a fully functional savusauna elsewhere.
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