— Authored by Katharine Christensen
One cultural experience that Turkey has to offer is the Turkish Bath, or a Hamam in Turkish. This method of cleaning the body and relaxation dates back to ancient Greek and Roman times, and was especially popular in the Ottoman Region during the Victorian Era. The Tellak, or staff of the Hamam, were traditionally young men recruited from non-Muslim nations of the Turkish Empire, including Greeks, Jews, and Armenians. Today, Tellaks are both adult males and females, and can make a decent living through their trade.
To many in our group, the Turkish Bathing experience felt like a must-do. After a long day of touring, seven MBAs and our fearless group leader, Cindie, decided to embark upon a journey to a Turkish Bath near our hotel in Cappadocia. Despite the icy roads and overall poor weather conditions, our bus driver forged out at a disturbingly rapid rate to the local bathing establishment. While we were a little wary about the experience, our tour guide had promised us that this particular Hamam was relatively ‘clean and new’.
We arrived at the Turkish Bath, selected which massage packages we were interested in, and changed into our swimming costumes in our respective locker rooms. To begin the process, we were treated to a mud mask, and then ushered into a sauna to begin our cleansing process. Each of us left the sauna at our own leisure, and moved on to the next phase of the bath.
The large room we entered had a massive tiled platform in the center, and there was seating with separate tubs for each bather. Under the watchful eye of our tour guide, Yalçin, the 8 of us were first scrubbed with a loofah, and then washed with a large soapy sponge. Some students received more special attention than others, including some amateur chiropractic work and extra-rigorous ‘massaging’ that bordered on physical assault.
Once our Turkish Bathers decided we were clean, we were sent on to a soaking pool to relax before our massages. Each of us was collected by a masseur who took us to a room and began the massage process. Some masseurs were very curious about us, and we were glad to have made a good impression when they complimented us on being ‘very nice’.
Once the oven timers dinged to signal that our massage time was up, each of us was led back to our locker rooms to re-dress and re-enter the real world. We left feeling clean, tired, and very ready to tuck ourselves into our cave hotel room bed. We feel extremely lucky to have experienced this facet of Turkish Culture, and we created a memory with friends that will certainly stay with us for a long time to come.
| Katharine | Christensen |
Wisconsin MBA 2011 trip to Turkey 