Spa Magazine

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Photo by: Guenter Fischer/Age Fotostock

When in Karlovy Vary, the Czech spa town formerly known as Carlsbad, you do as your spa doctor tells you.

So 45 minutes before breakfast, holding a small porcelain cup with a curved spout in my hand, I walked down the steep cobblestone street from my hotel, crossed a bridge over a steaming canal, and entered the Thermal Spring Colonnade, an angular building from the Communist era where people sat, stood, and milled about—all of them holding similar cups and sipping from the spouts. The five fountains in the long hall were stained reddish brown from years of dribbling mineral water. I filled my cup from the coolest (they range from about 105 to 162 degrees) and took tiny sips, trying to make the water last for the recommended 10 minutes before I filled the cup again. 

After breakfast, I went to the top floor of my hotel to join a group of robe-clad men and women sitting in chairs and holding prescriptions in their hands. Four therapists dressed in clinical white strode briskly in and out of treatment rooms, glanced at papers, and led us away one by one. Most verbal exchanges were in Czech or Russian, so for patients who couldn’t speak those languages, gestures had to suffice. 

When it was my turn, a therapist led me into a room where others were lying on cots, tucked me into one, and then placed a mudpack on my back. Standards like “Diana,” “Never on Sunday,” and “Santa Lucia” sung in Russian played loudly in the background, but I could still hear a mysterious hiss coming from another corner of the room.

The next day, as I was guided to another cot and instructed to wriggle my way inside something resembling a large plastic garbage bag, I realized this was where the hissing sound was coming from. It was the noise of a carbon dioxide dry bath, a treatment given to dilate veins, increase oxygen content in the blood, and lower blood pressure.