Naked, with hat
Cats: Ilona's Take, the change it is a-comin'|Germans love to strip off. Really. They have nude areas in city parks, families skinny dip together in lakes, university students pose nude for calendars, they have nude air flights, even naked rock-climbing.
One does wonder if they take it to an extreme. Nekkid rock-climbing? Fresh air and sunlight on strong healthy bodies is all very well, but there is a time and place for protective clothing, and the possibility of my girly bits — or some poor fellow’s boy bits — coming into abrupt contact with a rocky outcropping would suggest this is one of them.
However, a beach? Assuming you buy your sunscreen by the gallon, a beach seems a perfectly reasonable place to bare all.
Not everyone, however, would agree. To the north of Germany, on the beaches of the Baltic Sea where Germany meets Poland, there used to be a fence between the German beach and the Polish one. Someone — no one seems to know who — took it down. (No one seems to know why, either.)
Suddenly, there was a problem. The more demure Poles would prefer that the bare-all Germans not. Thanks. It was disgusting! Appalling! It was so disgusting that some Poles grabbed their bincoculars to get a clearer view of all that disgusting-ness. After some discussion the beach was sectioned into clothing-optional and clothing-required sections.
One wonders why not just replace the fence. So an not to deprive people of their opportunities for righteous indignation, perhaps? Because it would be a shame not to get a chance to use those binoculars?
Whatever the reason, Usedom beach is now sans fence, but with carefully signed “clothing required” areas.
One hopes that these two understand that hats do not count as “clothing”.
