Angella Johnson VIEW FROM A BROAD
Can you imagine having to strip off to interview someone in the buff? That was the prospect awaiting me when I decided to check out the German population’s proclivity for taking their clothes off in public.
“You do realise that you will have to participate?” declared my interpreter Felix, a little blond guy with a tight body and a large leer, when I told him of my intentions.
What? Me get my kit off?
“Well, if you are going to visit a nudist colony, it would be very impolite for you to go there without taking off your clothes. The people there would be very offended,” he suggested.
Ah well, I sighed placidly. I suppose it won’t be so bad if everyone else is letting it all hang out. Privately though (no sense upsetting him until we got there), I thought, not bloody likely.
As it happened, my guide for this leg of my quick tour of four German cities was a chubby young woman who was equally anxious not to bare all. We drove some 15km outside Bonn to a secluded farmland opposite a huge strawberry field.
From the outside it looked like a run- down camping site. Rows of caravan trailers neatly parked in a landscape rich with foliage offered no indication that behind the high metal gate men, women and children were running amok – buck-naked. Or so I imagined.
This is where the nudist members of the Frei Krper (Free Body Culture), an association with more than 160 local clubs throughout Germany, come to get away from all natural and man- made fibres.
“We are not nudists,” corrected Wolfgang Weinreich, the national and international vice-president of the F- ka-ka, as the association is phonetically known.
Excuse me, but are those not nude people I see wandering about?
“This is an outdoor sport like hiking and walking. It is not for competition but more for fun and a healthy lifestyle. Those who take off their clothes in public [and by all accounts it is a national pastime] are exhibitionists. We just want to get closer to nature.”
That was exactly what Inge Schleiden, a sweet old granny, and hubby Hans were doing when I came upon them enjoying tea and fruit cake outside their caravan without a stitch of clothing on.
I tried not to appear too uncomfortable, but when Inge walked over to invite me to join them, I was a little lost for words. “It’s very liberating, you know,” she cooed. “You should try it sometime.”
As the sun began to make an appearance, more naked folks started pouring from their caravans. I saw a family having lunch on a camp table (grandparents were au naturel, but the kids munched on their sandwiches fully clad). Even the gardener was working unrobed.
“Don’t worry,” reassured Weinreich. “Three or four minutes maximum, and all embarrassment will be gone.”
That’s what he thought. I still cannot get over the first time I met a naked girlfriend in the sauna; I could barely stop myself staring at her cellulite-clad thighs and wondered if she was surreptitiously eyeing mine.
I wondered if the F-ka-ka ever gets lechers wanting to sign up.
“If you want to stay here, then you must go naked,” said Weinreich. “But if people are here to look or to show off, it’s very quickly noted and we kick them out.”
Why this need to reveal all?
“It’s wonderful to be out of your clothes. You feel free, and it’s nice.”
Nice?
“Yes … Have you tried it before?”
No, I replied.
“It is difficult to explain. You must do it. That would be better than to talk about it.”
That was the moment I had been dreading. He was going to ask me to disrobe. Oh heck!
I held my breath. But thankfully, he did not push it and we walked on briskly, emerging in a clearing with several hard tennis courts and volleyball courts (one could graze some very sensitive parts in the event of a fall).
Marianne Thorst, a paediatric nurse, was playing topless tennis with her fully kitted teenage son Salomon.
Are you not embarrassed? I asked her.
“Why should I be?” she replied, unruffled. “It is something we do as a family. It is good for the children. Inhibition, once lost, makes you a better person. You grow up with a better appreciation of the opposite sex and with no sexual curiosity.”
I had always thought the Germans somewhat hermetically sealed, emotionally, so all this naked glorification was rather hard to take.
Are you not afraid paedophiles might exploit all this openness? I asked Ule Zander, a doctor who insisted I take frontal as well as rear pictures of her playing buck-naked.
“There is no place here for perverts. We have a six-month probation period for new members and they are closely watched. The first sign that something is not right is if they stare. We’re not supposed to do that.”
I was obviously verging on the pervert side, because by now my eyes were roaming fast. And what a sight it was. Most of the people parading about in their birthday suits looked as if they could do with a little ironing.
I don’t mean to be ageist, but they were wrinkly granddads and grannies sans knickers – grey, hairless (I mean below as well as above) and long past their prime.
Take Joseph Swart. At 78 he is still carrying quite a package (I think the term “hung like a horse” would not be out of place here), but he had more creases on his body than my washed linen skirt.
“It won’t harm you to look at me,” he chided when I averted my eyes skywards. “You won’t go blind, you know.” (Maybe not, but it might affect my judgment back in the real world.)
Weinreich, a theologian scholar and retired teacher from a Catholic girls’ school, insisted that, although elderly, these members are very energetic and dynamic.
“The problem is that we get the children when they come with their parents, but as they grow older they have their own pleasures and want to stay with their clique.”
It is only when these children grow to adulthood and have their own families that they return to the fold. Hence the dearth of members aged between 14 and 30.
Maybe these are the ones who go nude sunbathing in parks or swim naked in public pools? These “exhibitionists” – as Weinreich described them – come in all shapes and sizes and account for the vast majority of the naturist population.
“It’s normal for men and women to sunbathe or even swim in a public pool with no costume,” exclaimed Martin Peulus, a Spaniard who lives in Berlin. “I’ve been here for 10 years and it still shocks me when this kind of thing happens. Germans see it as an expression of their individual freedom of expression – they even do it in their lunch break. I just think it’s weird.”
But Meike Bruhns, a young journalist at the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, regarded the custom as normal. “It reduces a lot of sexual tensions,” she said. “When I sunbathe topless or naked with friends, guys don’t bother to hit on us.”
It was all very logical and I wish I could tell you that I denuded at least once.
Was I tempted? Let’s put it this way: the only item of clothing to leave my body during the entire trip was a jacket I threw off when the sun fought its way through the clouds during my brief respite with the F-ka-ka naturists.