As I watched the Leftover's show in uproarious glee, I was reminded for one poignant moment of some of my own travels. It was at the point where Tony echoed my own feelings: "Never refuse a drink."
I spent a month or so years ago, wandering Finland in the company of some of the loveliest folk one can imagine. Savvy, yet naive at the same time, they had an open-eyed approach to the modern age that I still remember.
It was during late fall, a pretty gloomy time of year, at least by tourist standards -
and I didnt give a crap, either. It was Finland, for God's sake! (watching some of the Iceland show also recalled my adventure with the Finns).
Well, to overcome some of the gloominess of the dark, long nights, the Finns have two things as aids: Vodka and SAUNA.
The Finnish sauna is just what you think it is -a hot, steamy sweat bath in a little redwood lined box-of-a-room. A superheated metal brazier lies in one corner, filled with hot-as-hell- lava rocks, just waiting to nip the hapless bottom that gets too close ( all sauna is undertaken, nude, by the way.)
On top of the blistering hot rocks is tossed lots o water to steam up the place and really break out a pouring of sweat. Ahhhhh, but that is just the beginning.
Once you get up a good sweat, someone breaks out a large whisk of birch branches, lashed together into a large mop-head of pain. See, you grasp the whisk firmly and flail yourself with it til your skin gets as raw as a skinned onion!
Once you look like the boiled lobster, then you really get to it.
Next comes a brush, which we Yanks might only consider fit for scrubbing the deck on an old boat. You guessed it - the eldest member of the group (Oh yeah, sauna is GROUP activity) then has the honor - and duty- to scrub raw every inch of whatever flesh you have remaining after the birch-branch beating.
About now, you are wondering if you will survive any more, when they all shout some unintelligible Finish gibberish and run outside! Naked!...and run right onto the snow covered dock and jump into a hole in the ice which someone has thankfully cut open ahead of time.
As you break through the thin crust of ice which is trying to reform over the hole, your flesh feels as if it is about to literally come off your bones like cooked hamburger. You scream at the shock, but because there is no bottom to the lake at that point (which is a detail that someone probably mentioned, but since you don’t understand Finnish, probably failed to grasp), all you can do is make for the surface so you don’t drown - or freeze to death - or both.
This hellish torture is repeated once again and then everyone feels content that they have endured enough - the FInns love this stuff by the way. It explains why I saw so many vigorous old people in the country. They either die young from such masochistic treatment this or they will live for ever...there is little in-between for the Finn.
Once the sauna has concluded, it is then time to celebrate your survival of the ordeal with vodka. Good clear, clean, vodka. Vodka as it should be - straight up and ice cold. They plucked it from a snow bank as we rushed back to the house form the lake. They liked to help it down with generous servings of a curious spread of boiled egg, butter and black pepper on toast triangles. And plenty of cigarettes. The Finns were real connoisseurs of tobacco. I guess if you can survive the sauna you can survive something as mundane as a cigarette.

God bless the FINNS, sauna and you, Tony Bourdain - sharing travel as it should be.