The hamam is actually a big marble steam room, with a domed roof and crazed, half-naked bath attendants who sing slow, echoey, yodely songs in Turkish. First they lead you into the central room where you lay on a hot marble slab with a fire underneath it until all your muscles slowly melt. Then they take you to a side room where you take your towels off and sit down to have several bowls of water thrown in your face before they tie black brillo pads to their hands and scrape your limbs until all the dead skin (and rather a lot of live skin) is removed. Next, they toss you onto a little marble shelf -- and here's I started giggling uncontrollably -- they have some Incredibly Soft Thing which they dip into a bowl of hot soapy water and, when they rub you with the Incredibly Soft Thing, an enormous volume of soap bubbles suddenly appear. After a few minutes of Incredibly Soft Thing magic, your entire world becomes soap bubbles and you float around in it while the crazed, half-naked bath attendants massage you. After the massage comes the merciless bowls of shriekingly cold water, then they let you collapse onto the hot marble until you can breathe again, then they wrap you up head-to-toe in giant dishtowels!
You can make fun of us for looking like homeless elves, but we are SO CLEAN!
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