slothis · English

Banya at a Dacha: Russian Sauna in St. Petersburg

2016-07-21 · Updated: 2026-08-11 · Original (Korean)

This article was translated from the original Korean post with AI assistance. Read the original Korean post →

After finishing my tour of the Hermitage, I headed to the meeting spot to see Timur, one of the main reasons I came to Russia. He's a friend I got close with while working on the same project at my previous company. Whenever he visited Korea, he would boast about St. Petersburg and talk my ear off about how I absolutely had to visit. The one thing he always brought up was the "Russian sauna." He practically sang its praises, insisting that if I came, we had to do a Russian sauna together, even if we did nothing else.

At 5 PM, we hopped in a car at the Four Seasons Hotel where we met and drove for about an hour out of St. Petersburg. Timur lives in a place called Shlisselburg. I heard that areas influenced by Germany have "burg" at the end of their names. After passing through Shlisselburg, we arrived at an area packed with charming little houses. This is exactly where you'll find a cluster of "dachas," the summer houses that every Russian dreams of owning. A dacha is a summer cottage that was distributed one per family during the Soviet era to help solve food shortages. Since solving the food problem was the primary goal, each dacha has its own field or small farm. That tradition continues today, so many families still own a dacha, and I heard that having one is a sign of wealth. So I looked at it with admiration, only for Timur to tell me it wasn't his house, but his father-in-law's. That meant he brought a friend over to his father-in-law's vacation home... and sure enough, the whole family was there.

Two people walking in the front yard of a house with green exterior walls, which has a sandbox and a swing.
A bizarre turn of events where I end up greeting my friend's in-laws and being treated to dinner.
A loaf of bread wrapped in plastic and a cup noodle placed on a table.

For the first time in a while, I had a proper, cozy dinner outside. (With vodka, of course.) While eating, I listened to his incredibly stoic father-in-law's military stories and ate until I was ready to burst, thanks to his mother-in-law's endless refills. Afterward, we took a short walk to digest and then began the sauna experience. It was a strange, awkward situation—doing a sauna with Timur and his father-in-law, whom I had just met—but there was no turning back now. The Russian sauna, called a banya, is the complete opposite of a Korean sauna. While we absolutely never go into a sauna after drinking, here it feels like they do the sauna just to make the alcohol taste better. It's a continuous cycle of drinking and sweating. First, you kick things off by taking three or four shots of vodka before entering the sauna. After your first 10 to 15-minute sauna session, you come back out and drink beer with some snacks. And you just keep repeating this routine for as long as you can endure it. That's the banya (баня). They enjoy the booze and the sauna so relentlessly that it makes Koreans—who forbid sauna entry after drinking—look a bit weak. Plus, I experienced the bizarre phenomenon of sobering up right after stepping out of the sauna, which made it impossible to stop.


A bunch of bananas, bread in a plastic bag, and a carton of orange juice placed on a table by the window.
The layout of a sauna inside a Russian dacha. Open the door, and there's a space to change clothes and dry off.
Red plastic basins placed on a bench inside a wood-paneled sauna.
Open another door, and you enter an area to splash cold water and store tools used in the sauna (like birch branches and various herbs).
A gray train stopped at a train station platform with lightly dressed people gathered around.
Finally, the sauna room itself. Honestly, it looks no different from one in Korea.
A metal stove topped with stones and a wooden bench inside a wood-paneled sauna.
Russia uses wet saunas, while Northern Europe apparently uses dry ones. But the difference doesn't really matter. What matters is the alcohol.

In Korea or other countries, when people think of "entertaining clients," golf or hostess bars usually come to mind first, but in Russia, I'm told the sauna is the go-to. It makes sense. When you drink, talk for hours, and occasionally smack each other with the white birch branches commonly found in Russia, you can't help but get close. The true beauty of this Russian wet sauna hits you when you lie down in bed afterward. I lay down, and I have no memory after that.

I don't know where I read this, but they say if a Russian invites you to their home, you should show up starving and assume you won't be going home that night. In my case, sleeping at my friend's father-in-law's house felt a bit weird, so I fully intended to just eat dinner and head back. But this guy told me he couldn't drive because he drank, so I had to sleep over. On top of that, he brought out every beer and bottle of vodka in the house. If you ever have the good fortune of being invited over in Russia, just accept that you'll be drinking heavily and spending the night.


A two-story house with light green exterior walls and white windows standing under a blue sky.
If I could bring one thing back from Russia, it would be this dacha. The outhouse bathroom is a bit inconvenient, but you can truly feel a sense of relaxation here.
A man pushing a child on a swing in a yard with a vegetable garden and a greenhouse under a clear sky.
A peaceful Russian summer weekend.
A house with light green exterior walls and a red roof standing next to a garden with a vegetable patch and a greenhouse.

Expenses

Total Expenses 1880RUB

Total Trip Expenses 525,936 KRW + 38,555RUB + $152.26