A German Idea of Freedom: Nude Ping-Pong, Nude Sledding, Nude Anything | Hacker News Reader

A German Idea of Freedom: Nude Ping-Pong, Nude Sledding, Nude Anything

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Just an FYI, the German word for naked is "nackt", not to be confused with "nacht", which means night. Which might not seem important, unless you, like my sister in law, accidentally signed up for a "nackt wandelen" or "naked hike", as opposed to a "night hike" at her daughter's university (Freie Universität Berlin) when she went to visit her last year.

Fortunately her daughter saw the mistake long before they attempted to attend. I can only imagine the scene had she not discovered the mistake before showing up!!! :)

Perhaps she would have enjoyed that more...

FYI, it's "Nacht/Nackt Wandern". No such thing as wandelen (Apparently Dutch, as noted below). German OCD kicking in, please ignore ;-)

Also of note, English speakers really have trouble pronouncing either correctly (They get conflated, really. As in, pronouncing ck/ch). Hence the confusion. (Anecdotally, I have lived for years(4) in the States.)

No such thing in German; wandelen is Dutch.

Well, German actually has the similar word "wandeln", which means something like "to stroll" and is often used in phrases like "unter den Toten wandeln", which can be translated as "to walk among the dead". So this is quite similar to the Dutch "wandelen" but used in different situations.

maybe it was a typo? Wandern is german for hiking.

I don't speak German.... How do you say walk/hike?

laufen/wandern

> before showing up!!!

Not only overdressed, but at entirely the wrong time of day as well!

Anecdotally, if you have body-image issues, spending some time nude around others (like at a nude beach) can actually help alleviate them. Seeing other peoples asymmetrical, weird and quirky bodies makes you realize that it's the norm.

Going to a gym with a shared locker room or communal showers can have this effect, too. Even at a place like a gym, you will find very, very few people who are perfectly "cut." And while we all tend to obsess over the ways in which our bodies are weird, it can be liberating to realize that everyone else's body is weird too.

Yeah but then it’s possible to start imagining people as domesticated deer. In other words like sedentary house deer. Except non ruminant deer.

Most nudists are not that perfectly built so you probably get a pretty realistic impression how people really look.

My body image got shattered on a beach in Santa Barbara... No nude people but everybody almost perfect.

Equinox is the same for me. Very motivating since everyone looks good.

Dunno, I'm pretty non-puritan and got desensitized to nudity of all shapes just from the web, but the lesson was that I shouldn't assault people's gaze with my pitiful physique.

This is like saying all Americans love McDonalds :)

(I'm German)

If this was voted up for fun I'm on it, if it was voted up because someone thinks it is true count me out :)

from the article

> A lot of Germans don’t get naked in public, but nudists are ubiquitous enough that the practice has entered the national psyche.

Nope, not true (south Germany)

This is assumed to be true in previous east Germany. I cannot confirm or deny how real this assumption is ;-)

On sunny days there are naked folks in Englischer Garten, Munich.

Yep. Riding to work, I often got an unexpected and unwelcome eyeful.

So based on your analogy you are saying that it's true for most of German population? Good to know!

yeah :)

I have a feeling this must be more common in ex-Protestant, now atheist regions and definitely not in the Catholic South and South-West.

It has less to do with religion than with the regional culture of East Germany (it's/was also as popular in catholic Poland).

Being naked in the sauna is even more common not only in (East) Germany.

The division between Protestant and Catholic parts in Germany is (as far as I can see) much more than about religion, similar to Ireland; these are just convenient names.

I remember watching a video called Hippies From Hell in which a bunch of German lockpickers (from Sportsfreunde der Sperrtechnik) were picking locks.. at a lake, naked.

It didn't strike me as German; it striked me as part of hacker culture. Was I wrong?

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportsfreunde_der_Sperrtechnik

Virtually all Americans love McDonalds.

If we Americans were a little less fond of McDonald's, we might be a little less unsettled by the idea of other people seeing us naked :D

Hey chupa-chups, this thing about nudity is of course a generalization.

However, I'm told all Germans absolutely adore asparagus, are passionate about them, and it is always an appropriate topic of conversation, whether discussing their many variants or how to cook them.

Can you confirm this?

From personal experience I can confirm a corporate event for a famous bank consisted on a field trip for asparagus-gathering, and that once the season starts, they pop everywhere in the schnitzel sauces of daily menus every week :)

Yes

You did not have a passionate asparagus discussion if you didn't touch the urine smell issue.

Please elaborate!

If you eat asparagus, your pee smells like asparagus (kinda).

It's pretty fun actually

As the other commenter wrote.

Pee stinks BUT there is a catch: only a certain amount of people have smelly pee and some people produce smelly pee but don't smell it.

It's genetic. Some enzyme turns something in the asparagus in sulphur. It's pretty bad. I have it and my SO too.

So a high end asparagus discussion contains the "are you a stinker" team finding competition ;)

What caught me in this article is that it puts naked children in the pool in the same corner as nudist adults. The former is very common outside the English speaking world in general while the latter is rather a Germanic thing. Personally I find places that don't allow nudity for small children quite strange - it's basically sexualizing them way too early.

I also particularly enjoy the "Germanic Stare Down"[0] culture; being free to look at anyone and in the eyes without that being considered hostile is something I consider healthy as well. Compared to other places where lack of eye contact can make you feel isolated and alone, a pair of eyes and a smile in the street can bring a sense of belonging.

[0]: https://www.spiegel.de/international/the-germanic-stare-down...

The friendliness of a pair of eyes depends quite a bit on the context. This culture seems quite potent in (German-speaking) Switzerland as well, but at least as a visible minority I seem to experience far more less-than-kind stares that wouldn't be acceptable in the US or the UK, for instance. Giving people license to stare can certainly make others feel like they don't belong when it's indiscriminately applied.

I'm visibly not German as well, so I understand what you are saying. Though, I believe it is better than non-looking cultures, because now that they are looking I have the chance to portray the image of who I am, which is a non-hostile, open and warm person that I believe to be, and most of the time this non-verbal communication is picked up by the person staring and I get an attitude shift that corresponds to my attitude. If you immediately feel threatened by the stare, that will be displayed on you, and that will make others look at you even more cautiously. It is not the staring the problem, it is the solution. It is a body language and it can be used collectively for acknowledging who is fit and who is not for the community and also a non-violent ostracization when that one feels so uncomfortable that flees. In a non-staring culture, people never get a chance to read you, they simply glimpse and then immediately make a judgement based on their own presuppositions and then treat you as such. Not in Germany, they will stare until they understand.

They are probably trying to figure out where you are from. As an American with Norman and Germanic ancestry I get stared at periodically when shopping, and I think they are trying to figure out what is off about me. I definitely do not perceive it as friendly or welcoming in any way. What is unique about the Germanic stare down is there is no effort made on the part of the starer to avert their gaze or even acknowledge that they are staring. Walking towards the starer usually encourages them to turn away.

People will always try to figure you out. But with the German stare this communication is enhanced, you get feedback on their feelings for you and you can respond to that with your attitude. In other cultures, they make a judgement and there is nothing more to be done, they close down. In Germany this channel of communication and feedback stays open and works, in my experience, collectively. Once you develop an attitude that works that stops the ugly stares in the grocery, then stares become less threatening in general, collectively. It does seem to be a kind of a super-organism behavior that isn't very well understood, which is why I find it fascinating.

This is something I've always struggled with. I grew up in a part of the world where you just don't make eye contact. Ever. Spent many years in and around colleges where folks were the opposite - very heavy on eye contact. And so I adapted. Moved back home after college and suddenly I was "too creepy" for everyone, even my family.

Feels like much less of an issue since I moved to Texas, where folks in the smaller towns are far more on the German side of things anyway, and folks in the cities are the usual everything all at once. Only really noticeable whenever I go back home to visit. I guess now I'll always be a bit too alien for them.

Where is home for you?

West Virginia, specifically Charleston. The general lack of eye contact was more pronounced in remote groups and less prevalent in Charleston proper, and I really never noticed until I spent time up in Morgantown at the university. Seems far more common in the deeper southern coal fields and almost non-existent in the north. Presumably this has to do with immigration waves and when parts of the state were settled (or when the industrial owners brought in large numbers scab labor), but I've never seen a study on it.

I really hated going to nude camps with my parents during the summer. I think that was a form of child abuse. For me, freedom is being naked alone in the wilderness where there is no one around, not in some crowded area with other naked people.

I get the idea that once you've accepted nudity then it would follow that you can do anything at all nude. But nude sledding sounds miserable and cold. Is this a translation issue or does someone actually think laying down naked in the snow on a toboggan and riding through winter's bounty is fun? Germans can be odd, but this sounds dumb.

As a American Midwesterner I have gone out with friends in shorts in the snow before and I know a lot of people who have done a polar plunge (i.e. jumped into a somewhat frozen lake). The fact that it's kinda dumb is also what makes it extra exciting.

> Is this a translation issue or does someone actually think laying down naked in the snow on a toboggan and riding through winter's bounty is fun?

I know Germans who indeed find this very funny. But afterwards, better put on warm clothes or even better go into a sauna. So it is clearly not a translation issue.

To be fair, German sleds usually look like this [0], so you are not lying down on the snow (unless you fall off), but sitting upright and quite far off the ground.

[0] https://www.pinolino.de/produkte/spielwaren/outdoor/schlitte...

Why is this only a German thing. There're nude beaches everywhere. Basic idea of freedom is to be free from the conventional norm.

> Why is this only a German thing.

I'd say that German is the sense of comfort towards nudity.

> There're nude beaches everywhere.

Well, islamic countries are very unlikely to have them.

When it comes to European countries, there are, however, some religions (ie. catholicism) are generally more conservative, and in countries with such beliefs, nudism/nudity is considered sort of "hippy", or strange in general.

Something I found really amusing is that in saunas in the north of Europe, "for hygienic reasons", people is invited to be naked. In the south, "for hygienic reasons", people is invited to keep clothes on.

There are certainly plenty of nude beaches and nude ranches in the U.S., but Germany certainly might be more accepting of nudity in public.

In Iceland, people are invited to shower in the nude with soap before getting in the sauna or hot tub "for hygienic reasons". Personally I like that one better than naked or clothed for hygiene.

Isn't that everywhere? I mean, if you go to a gym, don't you shower in the nude after your workout with plenty of nude people? That's every gym, in America, Germany, or wherever

I’d say yes, it is. Gyms where I live are a tad less public though, and not everyone at the gym showers at the gym. The showering before swimming in Iceland is something everyone there does, and for Americans it is a bit different than what we’re used to at a public swimming pool, hot tub, or sauna.

> catholicism ... nudism/nudity is considered sort of "hippy"

Nudity isn't an issue in Spain, Portugal or France from what I have seen.

I am unsure where you get your categorisation from!

Spaniard here, it is a mix and match. There are plenty of nude beaches but also people that frown upon topless. In my experience people tend to separate themselves in more secluded parts of beaches for topless, away from kids (if only to avoid some more conservative people complaints); and for nudity (which is definitively looked at as being extravagant / “hippie” as said above), if there are sand dunes and some bushes, people generally go there.

But I’d say people argue way more about having dogs in beaches than about nudity.

It's considered sort of hippy but it's not an issue.

Hygiene is a common excuse to enforce clothing culture. It is very similar to ban against burqa, and when France banned full-body swimwear it also cited hygienic reasons.

Here in Sweden you actually have a easier time finding a work place that accept burqa compared to a work place that accept people being barefoot. I find that to be a bit odd but then clothing is 99% cultural and has very little to do with logic.

How is a full body swimsuit less hygienic than any other piece of swimwear?

When looking it up, it looks like the actual claim is a mix of hygiene (not specified) and "upholding secular values", so it's absolutely an attack on displaying religious affiliation in public. Does that mean they also ban crosses, kippahs, and Dastars, or will they continue to target a specific religious group?

They seem to somehow relate terrorism with everyone who follows Islam, but that's like banning crosses because some predominantly Christian group commits an act of terrorism (white nationalists are often Christian).

According to the DDR museum here in Berlin, the popularity of nudism in east Germany was a reaction against the restrictions of the DDR government.

Freikörperkultur

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freik%C3%B6rperkultur

You only break into the culture if you get into FKK and our nonsense passion for David Hasselhoff.

David Hasselhoff caused the unification of Germany, so everyone loves him :D

Sorry if this is offensive to some folks, but the folklore here is that David thinks he caused the reunification while everyone over here (that I know of) thinks he is a freak :)

Since this caused around -10 points until now I guess I offended somehow :) What I said is true for anyone I know, so I guess there's something I don't understand regarding the perception of "The Hoff", so please inform me :)

> David Hasselhoff caused the unification of Germany, so everyone loves him :D

> Sorry if this is offensive to some folks, but the folklore here is that David thinks he caused the reunification while everyone over here (that I know of) thinks he is a freak :)

No, what causes the unification of Germany was not David Hasselhoff's song Looking for Freedom, but Scorpions [1] with their song Wind Of Change [2], [3] (yes, I am aware this song is actually from 1991 - let us ignore this historical correctness, just as we do for David Hasselhoff).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scorpions_(band)&...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wind_of_Change_(S...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4RjJKxsamQ

Don't hassle the Hoff. Plus, he had a talking car before voice assistants which is just cool.

He is apparently on tour again this year, is anyone going?

http://davidhasselhoffonline.com

For any Americans interested, I suggest reading up on the American Association for Nude Recreation https://www.aanr.com

They have a bunch of affiliated clubs and resorts around the US. They all have strict rules against anything inappropriate in public.

Sometimes it's nice to go out in nature without a barrier between you and the wind, rustling leaves, chirping birds, etc. All of the ones I've been to have WiFi in case you still need to get work done.

The photos are so well done! I bet it took a lot of pictures to end up with such a good safe-for-work set including some action photos.

s/German/Berlin/ has probably more truth in it.

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