My advice is: don’t go to the sauna if you are not from Germany, because if you don’t get naked like everybody else in there, people will complain in your face and insist for you to be naked. In my culture, we are not comfortable being naked, and that’s fine. However, an old German couple insisted that I should take my swimming suit of because, according to them, “this is how we do in Germany”. It was an invasive behaviour, mostly because nobody can dictate what I should do with my body. When I asked why I should be naked, the old lady said that it was because of hygiene. Well, there isn’t scientific proof supporting this believing system. When I asked the people who worked there about the swimming suit rule, they said that this rule exists only because people complain if you use swimming suit at the sauna. I’ve lived in Finland, the sauna inventors, for 3 years, and you only need to take your swimming suit out on sauna after swimming in the swimming pool because of the chlorine, even without any scientific proof supporting this claim.
An important note: while I was there, the pool area was closed, so only the saunas were on. There is a sauna called “Finn sauna” what is a joke, because you are not allowed to trow water to the stove, like we normally do in Finland. So, do German people know how culturally offensive this is? My husband is Finn, and he was in complete shock. This place smells like xenophobia to me. That’s why you will see only Germans in there.