Germans are very formal and reserved.  Except when they’re not…

German Travel Group to Offer Nude Flights

An online travel Web site in eastern Germany will offer a clothes-optional flight to a lucky few this summer. Given the German love for all things naked, chances are it’s already sold out.

Huh?

An online travel agency, OssiUrlaub.de, has announced that it will offer a nude chartered flight between the eastern German town of Erfurt and the Baltic Sea island resort of Usedom.

The flight, planned for July 5 and returning a week later, will be able to hold 55 passengers, and tickets will cost €499 ($735).

"I wish I could say we thought of it ourselves but the idea came from a customer," managing director Enrico Hess told Reuters. "It’s an unusual gap in the market."

FKK, or "free body culture" — i.e., disrobed living — has been popular in Germany for some time. Although the Nazis banned the practice, it roared back into favor after World War II, particularly in former Communist East Germany.

Wait…what…?

Get Naked with the Germans

So we all agree that the photos of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s naked backside (more…) published in the Sun last month were out of line, right? The poor woman, after all, deserves her privacy.

Had that happened in the States, though — George W. stripping down in the Rose Garden after a particularly strenuous mountain bike ride, for example — the outrage would have been two-fold. Disrespect for the country’s leader on the one hand. But on the other, folks would be asking themselves what the hell a president was doing disrobing in public. The Merkel photos, though, triggered no such questions. After all, stripping off is something of a German pastime.

You’ll see naked Germans everywhere. Lying on the banks of the Isar River smack in the center of Munich. On the shores of the Havel on the outskirts of Berlin. In public parks. There’s one perennially naked guy who wanders around Munich’s English Garden like an ambulatory grandfather clock shocking foreign guests. His nickname is "The Hammer."

And then there’s the sauna. Forget about trying to wear a swimsuit in a sauna. First of all, you’ll be the only one with any sort of clothing at all. Secondly, you’ll be immediately pegged as a prudish Anglo-American. No one stares, no one tries to make you feel awkward, but everyone in the room somehow knows to address you in English. Though there is also a decent chance that the sauna authorities will come around, pour water on the broiling sauna rocks, and demand in a brisk impersonal voice, "Take off your clothes, please, no clothes allowed!" Jawohl!

None of this should be surprising. Everyone knows that an average continental European will whip off his kit at the drop of a hat. But Germans are a breed apart. They were on the cutting edge of organized nudity already in the early 20th century…

…

Not that all Germans approve of exposed tackle. While Americans may think all Germans are exhibitionists, Germans from the former East think westerners are kind of uptight. Communism had nothing against nudity, and after the Wall fell, there were bitter clashes between easterners and westerners who disagreed about where it was okay to be naked on beaches along the Baltic Sea. The problem was solved with special FKK beaches; but some naked easterners still resent the new restrictions and make a point of wandering as close as they can to the clothed section to antagonize their clothed, western cousins. "West Germans," wrote the Ostsee Zeitung — based on the German Baltic Sea coast — in 1999, "are prudes."

Uh.  Okay.  Well it would seem that all those TV Germans I grew up with bear as much resemblance to the real thing as all those TV Indians I grew up with.  And probably all those TV Brits…all those TV Mexicans…all those TV Frenchmen…all those TV scientists…all those TV cops…all those TV negros…all those TV homosexuals…

Message to a certain someone: When you said you and your wife were more into nature then technology…is this what you meant?