Eurovision fans built a sauna and drove it 3,000 km to the grand final

Robin Nyman’s road trip to the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest was less about the destination, and more about the friends he made along the way in the sauna attached to the back of his car.

Nyman and his friends are supporting Sweden’s Eurovision hopeful KAJ and their song Bara Bada Bastu, an upbeat ode to Northern European sauna culture.

So they built a sauna together, then towed it behind a 1980s Volvo for roughly 3,000 kilometres from Vörå, Finland, to Basel, Switzerland, for the musical contest’s final showdown on Saturday. 

“It’s been a lovely journey full of meeting people along the way,” Nyman told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal.

“The core of our project is connecting and building bridges to other people, and going into the sauna with strangers and, hopefully, coming out from the sauna with friends.”

The sauna as a great equalizer 

Nyman and his fellow KAJ fans — Oa Lönnbäck, Aja Lund, and Tom Tiainen — left Finland earlier this month and drove for eight days, crossing Stockholm, Copenhagen and Frankfurt to finally park their sauna trailer in Basel on Thursday.

Before they set out, they posted about their adventures on social media, inviting people along their route to join them in the sauna, which can comfortably seat six to eight people.

When they spoke to CBC Radio on Monday, they were in Strande, Germany, with “a new group of friends.”

“Right now, we are opening the first bottle of wine and sharing a dinner together, and I think in an hour or two the sauna [will be] hot,” Nyaman said.

There’s no better way to connect with people than sharing a sauna, Nyman said. 

“First of all, you leave your phones outside because it’s hot and steamy. Second of all, you leave your clothes on the outside,” he said.

“When you just enter a sauna with a towel around you, it’s very democratic and nobody really cares about profession or income or history. You just sit there and start from zero.”

Then, he says, the heat kicks in, people unwind, and the conversation starts flowing.

“Some of the most valuable and deepest talks in our lives have actually been inside a sauna.”

Some ‘awkward’ moments

Still, he admits the journey has had its rough spots — like when they stopped by the house of a woman in northern Sweden who saw them on Instagram and invited them over. 

“I don’t know if she had forgot or just thought it was better not to tell her husband,” Nyman said. “So, that night, seven people and a sauna and some cars rolled up on their front porch and, yeah, he didn’t know about it. So that was a tad awkward.”

But even that was no match for the calming power of the sauna, he says. 

“We sort of got him into the heat of the sauna and, after a while, he relaxed,” Nyman said. “The night just was flying really, really smoothly after that.”

KAJ is representing Sweden, but the three band members come from neighbouring Finland, a country of 5.5 million people and 3.3 million saunas, where they are part of the Swedish-speaking minority.

At Eurovision, the trio perform their song, Bara Bada Bastu — which roughly translates to “Just Take a Sauna” — on a set styled like a rustic cabin in the woods, backed by dancers dressed as lumberjacks or in big white towels.

Band member Kevin Holmström said that the band is delighted to be an ambassador for sauna culture.

“It’s a thing I really endorse,” he said. “It’s good for people. It is good for me, for both my mental and physical health, and [it’s] also a very social event.”

KAJ entered Sweden’s national Eurovision selection contest thinking it might get them some gigs in Sweden, then unexpectedly won. Now, they are favoured by bookies to win the pan-continental music contest. 

The Eurovision winner will be decided by a mix of public voting and points from national juries, and Nyman thinks KAJ has a good shot at victory.

But if they don’t make it, Nyman says, it’s no sweat off his back. 

“Whether our group that we are supporting is winning or losing, it’s not a big deal,” he said. “I think we are all winners in this together anyway.”