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On frosty winter nights, the city is an inhospitable place. The windows of Petrograd’s splendid imperial palaces stand empty. Leningrad’s spacious boulevards and faceless facades make me feel small, as though they were designed to make people shrink in comparison. Hurried figures catch floating snowflakes on their fur-framed faces. Their expressions are as impenetrable as the walls of the Kremlin. Stiff as an icicle, burying my chin deeper in my collar, I hurry towards the dim-lit sign: “Banya”, advertising a local bathhouse, thrilled at the chance to finally peak behind the city’s frigid exterior. The wainscotted walls inside could easily pass for a regular family home. The clerk looks blankly at me, making no effort to indulge my broken Russian. I underdress hastily. Will the other bathers will be naked too, I wonder? As I make my way down the corridor, the air becomes stickier. The warm smell of sorrel soup hits me first. In the "relaxation room", several plastic buckets with leafy twigs in murky water line the wet grey terrazzo floor. Flabby white bodies, wearing nothing but felt cloche sauna hats, recline on metal benches. The gathering of silent eyes follows me through to the adjacent steam room. Here, everything melts into the balmy steam. Squinting through the thick mist, I climb the wooden benches towards the blob of bodies at the top, drenched in orange sauna light. The hunched women must have been here for a while now, as they furiously rub their eyes and temples. Sweat drips down the curve of their backs. Eager to engage, I gesticulate towards the leafy brooms in their hands. “Biyend over,” a woman replies dispassionately. For a moment just then, I feel a shadow of unease. My naive curiosity is momentarily eclipsed, as I suddenly remember that I am naked, huddling together with strangers in a foreign city. Slowly, I lower my face down onto my knees. There is a crackle, a sudden tingle across my back - then a dull slap. I freeze. The supple birch twigs hit my shoulders again, this time with more force. The sodden leaves stick to my neck. A second woman stands up: “Dub” (“oak”), she adds encouragingly, and slaps me with her twig. Face down, all I see are green scraps falling on the wooden boards and pairs of feet shuffling around me to get the best angle. The taboo is broken. Moments later, we are all standing, waving our arms wildly in circles, whipping our own backs as well as everything else that comes in our way. Madness ensues, birch meshes with oak, steam whirls around us. And then, the Siberian version of the Harlem Shake is over. Silently stepping down the decks, trampling over our forest litter, we are strangers again, who may just as well have been passing each other in the city's snowy streets. Like an obedient duckling, I follow the women as they plunge into a bath. I emerge wide-eyed and shaking with adrenaline, unsure if it was the icy leap, or the sudden immersion into local customs.