Ankara- Freelancing with IKEA

I had only arrived in Ankara about a week before, and although I knew some of my co workers, most of them were new to me.

So it decided to go to a hammam, the oldest one in Ankara, called ‘Karacabey ‘

As we entered the building, we walked down a few steps and on the left of us was a counter, where a Turkish lady was asking us what we wanted. As she only spoke Turkish, and none of our group could not speak anything but English, we seemed to manage to inform her we all wanted the wash and scrub and some of us wanted an oil massage after. 

There was a list that we pointed to, so it was fairly easy. Then the lady said something else, waving a cloth in the air. It did take us a while, but she wanted to  know if we wanted to buy our own scrub mitt or just use the communal one ? emm our own please.

 So by the time we sorted out who wanted what and the payments, we were all assigned a woman of our own, who was going to look after us.

We were each given a cubicle to get changed in and leave our clothes, I knew the others were going to wear bikinis, but as I was a little older and lets say more developed than the others, I plumbed for an all in one swimsuit.

As we walked through to the baths, it was like stepping into another world. There were vast marble columns and domes, it was so beautiful.

We were led, by our ladies through the vast hall to a side room, with seating and sinks, our ladies showed us what to do next, which was to just pour the water from the taps, into a bowl and over our heads, easy enough, I thought.

.

 After about 10 mins the giggles had worn off and we were not sure if we should still be doing this, when our ladies appeared. 

They took us by the hand and led us back into the grand hall and patted on the large round marble table to show us we had to lie on this. We were all told to remove our tops…eak, wasn’t expecting that ! Then it began..the scrub, with our own special mitt and soap, ohh and scrub she did and scrub, I thought I would have no skin left by the time she had finished. I was then spun around and encouraged to stand back onto the floor, where my lady began to rinse me with what seemed to be like buckets of water. I started to panic a bit as I could not breathe or see and was worried about my contact lenses falling out. Again this rinsing seemed to go on a lifetime, when I eventually could open my eyes all I could see was a face of a local woman also taking a bath, just staring at me.

At last we could get our towels and dry off. I must say the skin that I did have left was so silky and smooth, they actually showed us all the dead skin that had come off and it was disgusting.

We went back through to the reception area and those of us not having the next treatment, got ready and were offered tea while they waited for us.

I was sharing a room with a girl who I did know, a little more than the others, Jo. We still had our ladies by our side and they showed us to our massage tables. As I lay down on mine, I noticed that there were mirrors on the ceiling, so I could clearly see Jo on her table. We were still both topless and I was expecting the ladies to cover our modesty, but no, they got to work with the oils, feet, legs middle, BOOBS !!! 

Then we were told to roll onto our fronts, phew thank goodness, when I heard Jo scream ‘no, no I won’t take off my bottoms’ I started to laugh, but as I did, my lady whipped the bottom half of my swimming costume off. What a way to get to know your fellow co-workers !

When our ladies were finished, we were given a towel and led back to the changing room to get our clothes. Once we were ready, we too were offered tea.

 As for Jo, I have never seen anyone run so fast, muttering, I’ll meet you outside.

We were served Lemon tea in small glasses from a  silver tray, and just as we were about to leave, someone pulled a large speaker Karaoke type machine from one of the changing cubicles.

 Soon loud music was playing and a young girl was dancing in front of us. It was explained it was her hen night, that this was traditional.

 We were all encouraged to join in and dance.

Apparently this hen night tradition started back as time can tell. It was for the purpose of the mother in law, to be able to check out her son’s future wife naked. If she did not like what she saw in the bathing area, folk law says the mother in law would throw down her tablet of soap in front of the young girl, so that she would slip on it and cause injury, so therefore could not go ahead with the wedding.

Well who would have thought ? 🙂

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