Standing naked in a room full of people is rarely my idea of relaxation, especially when every other person in the room is fully clothed. The attendant, Jaroslav, had told me to take off all of my clothes behind a curtain and then meet him over in one of the small cubicles on the other side of the room. So when I popped out from behind the curtain, the last thing I expected to run into was a line of ten teenage girls walking through the building on a school field trip.
Trying to act as casually as possible, I just smiled and nodded as they filed past. I had no other choice as they were blocking my path to where Jaroslav was waving for me to join him. But as soon as the girls were out of the room, I bolted over to cubicle 5. Then, without warning, two more men entered the cubicle with a huge bucket, the contents of which were immediately dumped all over me.
Once the bucket was empty, I suddenly had four hands spreading the steaming, thick mud onto every inch of my body, inches that I knew existed along with several inches of body that I wished these men had not discovered. The next step involved two sheets and two wool blankets, all of which I was promptly wrapped up in, making me feel like a dead body rolled up in a carpet. And just like that, all three men left the cubicle and I was left there on my own, to sweat and bake.
The first thirty minutes of this mud wrap actually passed by quite enjoyably, but as soon as the itch on my cheek became so unbearable that I had to use my tongue to lick off the mud so that I could scratch it, the experience went downhill from there.
Torturous itches started popping up all over the place as the mud began to harden. When the session finally ended, I let out a gasp of relief as Jaroslav directed me towards the showers to wash off the mud. I had one mission, and that was to quickly remove the dried mud from the parts of my body where dried mud should never be. In the foothills of the Carpathian Mountain Range, along the banks of the Vah River in Western Slovakia, lies the small, intimate town of Piestany, a community that has attracted a steady stream of visitors over the past years.
