About eight autumns ago my wife and I traveled to Altaussee, Austria in the state of Steiermark. She had a seminar to go to, which lasted a little over a week but the sessions only lasted the mornings leaving us to vacation the rest of the time and on the weekend.
We had been married about two years and were living in a little flat in Stuttgart. We had no car, so we borrowed her mom's car and made the trip down and checked into our little hotel with a mountain view.
After a couple of days we were walking back to our hotel when we saw the innkeeper's daughter with an armful of pine branches. I was curious and asked her about them. She told us it was for the Gradieranlage and that there had been a full moon the previous night and that's when they had to be cut.
Now this really got my interest and I asked her if I could try this Gradieranlage out. She said it was open for guests of the hotel, so that afternoon my wife and I went downstairs to the little room with the pine branches.
This video will show you a bit of Altaussee and at :56 you will see a Gradieranlage.
(the video isn't mine, I don't know the people in it.)
There are a few other Gradieranlage videos on Youtube if you want to get another look.
The way the Gradieranlage works is that the salt from a nearby salt mine is mixed with water to make what is called Sole. The solution is then trickled down along the pine boughs and causes the essential pine oils to be released. After breathing this pine oil saturated air for about 10 minutes I noticed I could take much deeper breaths than I could before. Then a warm feeling started to flow into my hands and up into my head. After about half an hour it was too much for me and I stepped out.
Now, the mechanism by which all this works on the body is supposedly the fine salt crystals mixed with the pine oil in the air starts scrubbing out the bacteria and probably the soot from smoking too. It is also supposed to reduce swelling of lung tissue. It is advertised for allergy sufferers and some insurances will pay for a stay at a spa to use the Gradieranlage.
What I can say from my personal experience is that after that half hour in the Gradieranlage I stopped smoking after a 30 year pack a day habit. I don't quite understand it, but the first cigarette I tried smoking after my visit to the Gradieranlage tasted almost like my first - horrible. But I decided I wasn't going to smoke anymore. I couldn't stand the taste or the smell of cigarettes after that half hour and after a few more years I started to be able to smell cigarette smoke from the garden three stories below us when people would barbecue there in the summer. To this day I have to move upwind from people smoking at the bus stop.
I don't know if every smoker would have the same results as I did, but I have always wanted to pass this experience on to anyone who might be visiting Europe and might have a chance to get to Steiermark or some other area where there is a Gradieranlage set up. I know not everyone is able to catch a plane to Austria and I'm fortunate to have moved to Europe. From what I understand it is a regional thing and might have something to do with the salt that is mined there.
By the way, the German verb gradieren means to concentrate brine. An Anlage is a facility.