VIENNA’S healthy heartbeat
A Turkish woman wearing what appears to be only a hand towel and a smirk leads me into a wet room, hands me a scrap of cloth and instructs me to lie in the searing humidity for which my home town of Brisbane is better known.
But I am in neither Queensland’s capital nor Istanbul, for that matter — I’m smack bang in the heart of Vienna, in the city’s oldest hammam. And I’m indulging in one of Europe’s ancient spa cultures, which Vienna has embraced with the same gusto as sausage stalls, schnitzel and Strauss.
I’m with an equally skimpily clad colleague (female) and we’re lying on a marble slab, heads resting on what resemble overturned dog bowls, no therapists in sight. It’s only a matter of time and willpower to see who will eventually break the muggy silence we’re punctuating with broiling sighs.
I crack first, announcing that I will go in search of our Turkish torturers and demand that they release us from this humid hell. But even that is easier said than
