Nearly ‘Textile-Free’ Spa Day in Baden-Baden, and What’s Donge-Swingen?

How did we wind up in a spa in Baden-Baden when we were supposed to be in France? And where are my trousers? Traveling sometimes throws you a curveball, and it’s important to go with the flow. And since this diversion finds us in a thermal spa in our bathing suits, I mean that literally.

The plan was to travel from Tübingen to Baden-Baden, have a quick look around, stay the night, then slip into France for a day trip to Strasbourg before moving on to Heidelberg. But after heavy travel three days out of four, I couldn’t take it anymore. In the words of Danny Glover’s character in Lethal Weapon, “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

That’s how we wound up spending a splendid afternoon at Caracalla Spa (Caracalla Therme) in Baden-Baden, which I know from researching U.S. thermal spring spas has already spoiled me. It would be like visiting the Great Wall, then looking at your neighbor’s back fence. Or in a water sense, visiting this palatial bastion of relaxation versus being offered a soak in a water trough with a trolling motor for bubbles.

The expansive spa features huge connected indoor and outdoor pools of various temperatures, with whirlpools, an outdoor lazy river that gently propels one through the pool, waterfalls, a steam room, cold spa, two solariums, and plenty of indoor and outdoor lounging space. There is also an area upstairs that contains I don’t know what, because this American Southerner doesn’t go au natural with his 18-year-old in tow. Prices were quite reasonable, and we spent a glorious three hours trying out the different pools and saunas. The pools truly are huge, so it didn’t feel like an American water park during summer.

Donge-Swingen Definitely Not for Me

Playgrounds for the rich and famous often spring up around thermal water sources, which is the case for Baden-Baden. A block away from Caracalla is Friedrichsbad, which the website describes as “textile-free,” a euphemism for what Southerners call “nekkid.”

The idea of the modern bath started with a County Cork physician, Richard Barter, who built the first such facility in Ireland or Britain in 1856 near Blarney (no kidding!). The Friedrichsbad followed two decades later, preserving the remains of a genuine Roman Bath House. It certainly is beautiful to see from the outside. Bathers partake in a nearly three-hour, 17-stage bathing process of gradual heating and cooling, moving from one bliss-inducing station to the next.

Earlier in Tübingen, Declan and I discovered that the German word for silhouette filmmaking is something like “silhouettefilming.” My sense of humor and pidgin German got the better of me that day, calling a CBD dispensary with a full window display of bongs a “bonge-smoken.”

So amid our glorious day out at Caracalla Spa, relaxing and soaking to our supreme contentment, I couldn’t help but think of the “textile-free” areas of both spas as “donge-swingen.”

Regardless of what one calls it, donge-swingen isn’t for me. Maybe next time … and there definitely will be a next time.