Teuva, Finland. Mobile Saunas Festival. Extracted Teeth.

This post is a part of a mini series describing my sauna-centered road trip across Southern Finland.

The Festival #

Directly from Helsinki port, I headed to Teuva, planning to spend the entire next day at the annual Mobile Saunas Festival. Just before that, I had acquired my own mobile sauna, making the event especially relevant for me.

The festival’s setup is simple: a large collection of mobile saunas of every imaginable kind are brought to the location by their owners, heated up, and opened to guests.

I heard of some people challenging themselves to try every single one (see Mikkel Aaland in the first episode of Perfect Sweat).
I managed to try around 20 of them.

Some had long lines (like the dumpster sauna), while others had no visitors or owners at all (like the tent sauna). Amazingly, almost all of them had excellent steam, and everyone I met was incredibly friendly.

The Healing Power of Sauna #

In my case, attending the festival was actually a bit risky, as just a few days before, I had undergone a complicated tooth extraction, leaving me with a deep wound, inflammation, and a few stitches.
The doctor was skeptical about the idea of going to a sauna but gave me his blessing on the condition that I avoid extremes in the steam room or cold plunges, once I explained how important the event was to me.

I looked around, selected what seemed to be a moderately heated sauna, tried it for a few minutes, and nothing bad happened. I tried again for longer, and still, nothing bad happened.
In fact, quite the opposite—very soon, the mild dental pain and inflammation I had been experiencing were gone for the first time since the extraction.

Hotter than the Hottest #

At the end, I witnessed what was probably the hottest sauna at the festival catch fire and burn down.

yet I could get even hotter

Surprisingly, the owner didn’t seem upset at all. In fact, he even gifted a horseshoe from the sauna to a colleague.

Nothing could top that, so I finished the traditional snack I had and left the festival, aiming for my next stop on the journey—the sauna capital of Finland, Tampere.

I definitely need to return and find out what kind of luck that horseshoe brought its new owner.

Going Back Home #

On the way back home, I made a brief stop in Estonia to test out my newly purchased mobile sauna with a local friend. Just like the stones I bought at the festival, it performed beautifully and continues to do so even now.