Bath Shower Home Design

Finnish cabinet ministers do it, Russian hockey players do it, Koreans do it on a first date. Social bathing—known as "naked communion" in Japan—is an integral part of several cultures, strengthening bonds between family members, colleagues, and heads of state. In many countries it's also considered the proper way to welcome a foreign guest. Whether sauna or sento, banya or hammam, the shared bath is society's great leveler, its group hug, its collective sigh. "Not sampling the local bathing culture would be like not trying the local cuisine," says Melisse Gelula, co-founder of Well&Good NYC, an online wellness guide . And like any other institution integral to a society, this one has its rules, the first of which is to behave with churchlike decorum. In Finland, the sauna is the church, says Joonas Berghäll, co-director of the Finnish documentary Steam of Life. (Statistics bear him out: With just over five million inhabitants, Finland has roughly...

In its five-starred four stories, there are 216 rooms and suites, restaurants and bars, a kindergarten and a games room. The two-floor 5,500-square-meter spa, opened in 1992, is a state-of-the-art health, fitness and beauty center, part white-walled clinic, part sports complex , part pleasure palace . Use of the fitness and gymnastics rooms costs $14. (Local residents can join for $1,643 a year.) Guests create their own wellness programs. Some options: Clarins bust treatment , anti- aging facial care for both men and women, podiatry service, indoor tennis and putting green and driving range, the cuisine minceur diet , bio-sauna with light therapy, utter quiet in the relaxation room. The indoor pool, kept at about 82 degrees, is a Roman vision of hedonism with blue pillars, fulminating whirlpools, a waterfall and view of the rocky, tree-covered Harder. Doing laps here is not a chore. Interlaken itself -- a town of 15,000 ''between the two lakes'' on the Bodeli plain -- ...