Michael’s story: Travels in Czech (final part) / Michaluv denicek: cestovani po Cechach (posledni cast)

Michael’s last trip while visiting Czech was Marianske Lazne. I have to shamefully admit I have never been there myself but after reading his great story I so want to go! I am just not sure if I would do any spa treatments :0))

CZ: Michalova posledni zastavka v Cechach byly Marianske Lazne. Musim se vam priznat, ze jsem je sama jeste nenavstivila, ale pote, co jsem si precetla Michalovy zazitky, uz me nic nezadrzi. Jenom si nejsem jista, jestli bych si zaplatila nize uvedene lazenske taktiky :o))

THE ‘SPA’ EXPERIENCE

Marianske Lazne is a ‘spa’ town, one of at least three famous ones in the Czech Republic.  You may of heard of it by its German name ‘Marienbad’ and is famous as the place King Edward VII of Great Britain took the ‘cure’.  That Good King Edward only lasted nine years as King is no slander on the spa.  With our intentions of experiencing all things Czech, we took a spa package at one of the town’s hotel/spas.  We also walked about and sampled the waters; each clear spring gave forth a taste of supposedly curative water with tastes ranging from dreadfully mineralized bad-pipes to delicious mountain-fed stream water.  There is no doubt but that I have now been cured of dozens of horrible diseases and am now immune to all sorts of badly-named degenerative conditions. Our ‘spa package’ consisted of a hot-tub/massage, a solarium treatment and the infamous and aptly named ‘gas-bag’ treatment.  The first was mostly of interest because the robust female attendant spoke Croatian, some German and very little Czech while we spoke English and I with my rudimentary Czech.

No real problem until you have to descend into the hot tub and the question arises, does one remove one’s robe in front of said attendant or not. The answer to that question is yes (and without embarrassment) but we were novices to spas and did not know – I actually just took the plunge, as it were, and dived in; the attendant didn’t blink an eye.  The solarium turned out to be an anemic ten minutes on a tanning bed (hardly worth the trip) but the highlight of this spa package was the gas-bag treatment.  We had wondered about this since booking the trip some time before – my theory being that this must be where one breathes in pure oxygen. Well, the truth is much more bizarre and I’ve yet to find out the reason for this treatment, please tell me, readers, if you know.  Again, a female and efficient German-speaking attendant lays you down, whereupon you place your legs and body up to your mid torso (without robe of course) into a thick blue plastic bag, cinches the bag tightly around your chest, inserts a metal tube into the bag (“Hey, watch where that’s going”), and inflates the bag with gas, lastly placing a warming blanket over you making you look like a big fat sausage (blue, of course).  After twenty minutes, you are done.  How you are, in fact,   ‘done’ remains somewhat of a mystery but being done, you are expected to get up and leave.  Leave, we did, breaking into laughter out in the hallway and perhaps this is the key to health – laugh a lot.

So, this was it, our Czech travels; we ate, drank, observed, and finally, laughed our way though this wonderful country.  What a great experience it was!

PS: for Michael’s diary part 1 click here, part 2 click here, and part 3 click here.