This article was a link from a link from a Drudge Report link, on the official deliniation of six Urban Naked Zones in Munich, that is, formalizing existing practice and replacing an expired law.
And it’s true that nude sunbathing in Germany, and nude, co-ed saunas, are common practice, and I think every town pretty much has a spot for sunbathing — though on my first visit to Germany, for a language course, it was topless rather than nude sunbathing. It’s also the case that young children (up to the early grade school years) would change in public at the local pool, and parents of the younger girls didn’t fuss with a “bikini” top but had a bottom-only swimsuit.
A different culture, to be sure — though I wouldn’t have been confident enough in my knowledge of German and European culture to say that it’s distinctly German, as opposed to just European. (After all, the practice of men wearing speedos when swimming is European-wide, and there was an article floating around a while back about an American ex-pat in France creeped out by the fact that his local public pool banned long swim trunks as unhygenic.) Makes me curious as to whether there are bigger cultural differences underlying this. What do you think?
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In