A Day Without Stress

It is not by chance that one of the mottos of our trips is: treat yourself every once in a while. No, it is not by chance. The female part of our couplehood had to enforce this! Treating ourselves during a trip can be quite simple, such as stopping on a beach, having a siesta in the woods or reading in a hammock.

Upon our return home, we decided to start taking care of ourselves also when we are not travelling. Eight months after our return – better late than never, right?! – we finally reserved a day for our care. We took the day off work and planned to spend it at a spa resort. What a great day that was going to be!

No alarm clocks awakening us would be part of the great day ahead of us. Alas, we overslept. No reason to panic, we thought, we had the entire day, or what was left of it, for ourselves.

After packing towels and books we left the house. We decided to stop at the tax office – since it was on our way to the spa and, anyway, it wouldn’t hurt to do something useful of the day – to deliver some documents. We were received by strained faces and were happy not to comply with those. By the time we arrived at the spa it was already well past twelve.

At the cashier we noticed that it was pointless to purchase a day entry since half of the day was already gone. The difficulties started then. We had to decide beforehand how many hours we intended to stay in the resort in order to purchase the tickets. We had to make some mental calculations and some planning, and we needed to do it quickly, because a queue was taking shape behind us and resolute spa frequent-users were slowly getting tense. One hour at the swimming pool should suffice, a sauna of 20 minutes, a Turk bath should be feasible in 30 minutes, perhaps an hour for a massage or a rasul (perhaps two hours in the unlikely event of having to queue). Four hours should make it, or better five, to make sure there would be no running around, after all this was supposed to be a day without stress. Even if, at this stage, I slightly started doubting it would ever be.

After we had finally agreed on a five hours ticket, the cashier smiled and told us that the massages and the rasul would have to be purchased and paid separately, at a different counter. She also kindly explained that the time spent on massages was not discounted from the time at the spa. So we were probably not going to need to buy a five hours ticket. Four hours should be enough, she shot, and advised us to check the availability of the massages before buying the entry ticket with her. I hesitated about returning the smile to this obliging cashier, and decided against it. Basically, she was having just another ordinary and stressful working day. We were the ones having the alleged day without stress. We do have some extra entitlements on stress free days, no?!

Rasul booked out, we were explained by another competent and friendly cashier (where do they get this kind of people!) that such things should be booked well in advance, to avoid stress and disappointment – my oh my, we have a long way to go! How could we know then that several people DO take care of themselves continually! We ended up reserving a massage and quickly moved back to cashier number one where another hesitant client was slowing down the queue, heck!

By the time we actually set our feet in the water, we more than deserved an entire week without stress to compensate for all the stiff moments of that special day without stress. Moral of the story? Avoid a remedy that is worse than the disease. It looks like one can’t really plan a day without stress. But one should make the best out of what the day offers… and all the rest will come naturally…