Bali Therme

Bali Therme is a thermal bath at Bad Oeynhausen, in North Rhine-Westphalia. The building is furnished in a Balinese style, which is where the name comes from.

The water

The pools are filled from the Alexander-von-Humboldt spring, a state-recognised healing water drawn from 1,034 metres down. The venue says it spent 39,000 years underground, moving through limestone and dolomite and taking up minerals on the way, and that its salt and carbon-dioxide content is higher still than that of the Jordansprudel, the town's better-known spring. The bath names movement-apparatus and circulatory conditions as what the water is used for.

The iron pool

One basin is fed unfiltered, in what the venue calls the water's strongly iron-bearing original form, and it is the colour that tells you: a marked reddish brown. The bath recommends it for rheumatic complaints and says the iron strengthens the effect of bathing and of water gymnastics in the thermal brine.

Sauna

The sauna landscape runs to fourteen cabins. Among them is a dry, hot sauna built as a temple replica — 150 years old and six metres high, shipped to Bad Oeynhausen in 500 pieces — and a textile sauna in the thermal area where bathing clothes are worn. The steam bath is held at about 65 to 70 °C at 10 to 20 per cent humidity. A hamam with a soap-foam massage is being added.

Outdoors

A round outdoor pool is part of the thermal area; the venue notes it may close at short notice in frost, fog or a thunderstorm.

Visiting

No reservation is needed for the baths; massages must be booked by telephone. Six aqua classes a week are included in the ticket — four late-morning sessions and two in the evening.

The rules about children are unusually specific. Under-16s may only enter with an adult, and 12- to 16-year-olds need written permission and a copy of a guardian's identity document. Under-12s are not admitted to the sauna area at all.