Karlovy Vary - Weight Loss Program - Day 1 & 2

Tiny Chapel on the hill behind the Grand Pupp Hotel

Well it's interesting to on the Program again and glad to be doing it. I met with the doctor at the hotel yesterday as the initial part of any wellness program here in Karlovy Vary. I fortunetelling don't have any real medical problems I just want to increase my metabolism and loose weight. Of course the first thing she mentions is food and to cut down on it. That's not so hard since I mostly eat what I've bought at the supermarket and occasionally like today I get to have lunch somewhere and I had chicken cutlet with a potato/onion/bacon combination. Not exactly diet but it's not like I eat it everyday. I ate at this small Czech restaurant near the center of town where the locals live so it was very good although they are still allowed to smoke in restaurants here which is very disruptive when your eating so I have to remember to always look at the door for the no smoking signs.

Pretty Hotel Entrance Across from the Mill Colonnade 

After my medical exam, Dr. Irina proscribed my drinking cure, the most important part of any visit to Karlovy Vary as well as the long walks during the day. According to the Carlsbad Plaza spa book the Drinking & Cross-Country Cure is described like this. "Karlovy Vary has 13 mineral springs which can be all used for drinking cures.  The temperature of the springs ranges from 30 degrees Celsius to 72 degrees and the chemical composition of the water differs only in one substance: the free CO2.  The use in a treatment of that water is completely individual bu only a doctor should decide on it after the patients examination.  Generally, cold springs are suitable for speeding up the peristalsis.  The interval between drinking the mineral water and the next meal should be longer then with warm mineral water.  The warm mineral water has a soothing effect and patients should drink it shortly before eating.  Usually, patients drink 200 to 400ml of mineral water three times a day 30  minutes before eating.  The water should be drunk while walking.  A correctly applied drinking cure is the main part of a comprehensive spa treatment.  Another part of it is the cross-country walk.  After the examination of the patients physical condition the Doctor decides about the length and degree of arduousness of the walk.  Specialist have prepared a list of Karlovy Vary Walks which is available as a booklet.  It contains information about each of the 21 spa walks, the length and time in which it should be walked as well as the expenditure of energy.  Numerous summerhouse and routes in the woods prove that visitors of Karlovy Vary have always appreciated this par of the spa treatment.  Roads in the woods often bear the name of famous visitors of the town like Beethoven."

Mill Colonnade with 6 of the 12 Statues representing the months of the year

Mill Colonnade and two of the 12 statues

I am to drink from a modern building where the main fountain is housed with several spouts and my spout is 50 degrees fountain B. And there is a special cup that you drink out of and walk along the beautiful town as the minerals take effect and you prepare for your next meal. The "Spa cup is a special kind of porcelain, which is used to drink mineral or thermal water directly from spring. Spa cups were developed in north-west Bohemia in the spa region around the well known spas such as Karlovy Vary, Mariánské Lázně and Jáchymov. Originally people drank spa water using glasses. The development of spa cups started in the 16th century and went through a variety of materials, shapes and decorations. Now they are part of the Czech folklore." They come in a variety of sizes, even tiny ones for little kids, and the handle is like a porcelain straw that cools the water as it goes from the cup well to your lips. I'll take pictures of people doing their drinking cure in the coming weeks, it's fun to watch as people stroll down the cobble-stoned walkways sipping from their cups.

So my procedures over the last two days that Olympic spa which is across the street from my hotel as the hotel Kucera doesn't have a spa on premises so you are sent to other places in the city. This one is so close to the hotel it's perfect and it has a swimming pool, sauna, whirlpool, etc. that you can use all day long until about 9:00pm so it's perfect after I take a long hike and after treatments. It's nice because it's low season so the place is pretty quiet so you get lots of attention.

Small Pond near Library

I had a pneumopuncture treatment which consists of having CO2 shot into various parts of the body, mine were all in my back. It's like acupuncture but quicker. And then two treatments of lymph-drainage which consists of having the lower half of your body wrapped up like a mummy. Online it's described as "Pressotherapy is a compression technique designed to help improve overall circulation and tone up the circulatory system for faster detoxification and elimination. A computer-controlled compression system is used to inflate a sleeve applied to a limb and an automatic pressure gradient modulation provides a gentle effective lymphatic drainage. The system of compression and decompression duplicates the action of a massage, enhancing the skin tone and recommended for cellulite control."

Personally I like it and did both these treatments last time I was here and find the lymph-drainage to be one of the more relaxing but I guess compared to someone shooting you with compressed air in your back that would make sense.

Public Library

The last treatment today was a salt scrub and then a message with aloe vera. The massage therapist, Sona is great and so friendly. She said she doesn't speak very much English but in her business it's her hands that have to do the communicating anyway so it doesn't really matter. Personally I thought her English was pretty good for someone who doesn't get to use it often as most of their clients, like the rest of the city, are Russian.

So after a nice walk, although not 3 hours as it should have been, I am back in my room to type up the blog and then I'm off across the street for a few hours in the pool.

Oh, and I did stop at the public library earlier today which was great. You all know how much I love a library and today I got to check out a book which made me so happy. They have just a long shelf and half of books in English but that was great for me. I found a book and asked it there was a way I could check it out since I'm just a guest in the city and was so happy they had a one month visitor plan for only $2.50 US. So for now I have an European library card number which makes me happy beyond words. When I was in Galway, Ireland two years ago I went to their library a lot because I had my sisters library card but today I have my own, hurrah!!!

Addition since I left for the pool. The pool is medium size and not particularly warm but still really lovely and they have noodles and weights to exercise with and I showed three Russian women how to use them and they seemed to enjoy themselves. I met them in the sauna first with one of the women's husbands who talked to me in Russian even when I'd explained I don't speak the language. He was very sweet and trying to tell me about this odd contraption they have in the sauna that looks like a square, green piece of textured glass with lights inside the give the impression of falling rain and it also emits sounds of the forest like birds, owls, etc. It's actually rather distracting because it's so loud and I think what he was trying to tell me is he tried to have it turned off but they don't know how. The sauna other wise is large and very comfortable and has small star-like lights on the ceiling.

I also met a very sweet lady from Košice, Slovakia which is the second largest city in that country after Bratislava.  We were sitting in the whirlpool which for some reason was unable to produce bubbles or make the message jets strong. The staff worked on it but to no avail. But Denisia and I chatted for about a half hour. She is here with her husband Peter who works for a luxury mattress company and they were opening a store here in Karlovy Vary so they came for three days and Denisia got to do some spa treatments while he worked. It's so funny the conversations you end up getting into. She is a lawyer in Solvakia but currently on a 3 year maternity leave. Yes, 3 years. She made the comment that in America she believed it was only 3 months and I confirmed that and she looked horrified. But 3 years is incredible.  Her son Peter (not named after the father) is 2 and half at the moment so she'll be going back soon. And I mention the part about not named after the father because she ended up telling me the whole story of how something went wrong in her 7th month and the doctor had her rushed to the hospital for an emergency c-section and she got all panicked first because the baby may not survive and then because she wasn't ready she thought she'd have 2 more months to buy things and pick a name for the baby. And I found it interesting that she had a book on names with her while waiting for the ambulance and she said she had an argument with her husband at that time because he wanted the name Oliver and she wanted the name Martin. So she looked up Oliver in the book and it said it was a weak name, people named Oliver were not known to be strong and then Martin turned out to be weak as well. She looked up her name, just to keep her busy I imagine and again not a strong name by the books standards and then she looked up Peter and it was known to be one of the strongest by 92%. Yes, it amazed me that the book had percentages. But they had both agreed that they didn't like the Sr. and Jr.'s so they didn't want Peter. In the ambulance (and she got so animated at this point flapping her arms up and down) she was so nervous about the babies safety that she started talking to the EMT and it turned out his name was Peter. So when the baby was born and he was okay, very little, she said the size of a small chicken, her husband said let's name the baby Martin as he knew that was her first choice and she said no, he needs to be strong to get through this and he came out amazingly with fully developed lungs she said which is unusually for a baby so many weeks pre-mature so she knew he was the strong type and there must be named Peter.

Her husband popped his head around the corner of the hall to say they were all going to meet her at the restaurant so she quickly wrapped up the story. She was so happy to tell it to me and when I had mentioned that I was a playwright and director she said 'Could she inspire a character? The women in the pool with no bubbles.' I said yes, she was an inspiration and who knows maybe I would write a character of a Solvakian lawyer some day, one never knows.  But I love the idea of that title. "The women in the pool with no bubbles." I have no idea what a play with that title would be about exactly but it's a great title. So in the end I was inspired and I'll keep it all in mind when writing. It's funny because I fully expected to be the only person up there tonight and certainly didn't expect a story about a babies name or even the conversation the preceded it about crime and prosecution in Slovakia. See you just never know who you'll meet even in a pool with no bubbles.