FKK

I walk into the room and it is packed! Everyone is sitting shoulder to shoulder, eyes facing forward, just waiting. I scan the front row; there might be a place if I scrunch, but then I think “what weirdo sits in the front row?” I raise my gaze to the back of the room, which is higher up. No one would really call that a seat in the proper sense, but I won't be here that long. “Hey, is the spot next to you free?” I ask. After a few seconds of confirming gestures and cutting through the rows, I'm seated. It feels really hot in here, I turn and ask my friend if he knows what the temperature is. He says what the temperature is in Celsius, which means nothing to me. I convert it and realize that in Fahrenheit it's well over 190°. It would be so much worse if I weren't naked....

Between Christmas and New Years, I decided to spend some time with my friend, who coincidentally is also named Alex, in Tübingen. On the second day of my visit he asked if I wanted to visit a sauna. I wanted to go, but I hadn't packed a swim suit. He told me that wouldn't be a problem at all, and explained that it was, of course, a nude sauna. And instantly my interest was piqued.

See, at the Language School, we all joked about this German idea called FKK, which stands for Freikörperkultur, basically nudism. There are nude beaches in Germany just like in the States, and I've always been sort of curious. At home though, I always thought of nudism as sort of a fringe thing. Admit it, you think it's weird too! And even if I wanted to try it out, nudist colonies don't really do that much advertising, surprisingly. Although, when I label nudism a “fringe thing”, I conveniently ignore the amount of time I spend stark naked, (I may or may not be writing this blog post in my underwear.) But as a foreigner in Germany, I have a free pass in the name of cultural exploration. I can try out FKK and if I hate it, I can laugh it off as part of my cultural education, but if I enjoy it, then I can label my self “cultured” and “European”. It's a win-win situation!

Still I had some reservations. The unfortunate thing about being nude is that you can't hide anything. (Also there is no good place to put your cell phone.) I'll admit, I was a little nervous about this. I mean, I'm skinny, but I'm not an Adonis. The Germans, on the other hand, ride their bikes everywhere, eat next to nothing, and the love to “make sport” all the time. I was sort of afraid that it would be scrawny me next to a bunch of Hans und Franz, body builder types.

But that really wasn't my main concern. I mean, I've been to the gym and I know that there are dudes with wicked awesome abs that put mine to shame, and I also know there are dudes with beer bellies that could hold a keg. No. My main concern was that little Alex, Alyoshka as I call him, might wake up and embarrass the hell out of me. Granted, it's not as bad as in middle school when a stiff breeze was enough to wake him up, but still, spending 3 hours around a bunch of naked people, statistically I'll find someone attractive.

I decided I'd have to gamble on that last bit, so I memorized a picture of Courtney Love as a mental cold shower and hopped in the car.

The sauna itself was really nice. There were 5 different sauna rooms with different temperatures and occasionally they would pour water over the coals and the temp would skyrocket. My best guess is that the highest temp was around 220-225° Fahrenheit but only for a very little bit. In between the sauna rooms there was a garden you could walk around in. In the middle of the garden was a swimming pool. At first I looked at the pool and thought, “hell no, I'm not getting in there with all those nasty naked people in the water!” and then I realized that it is absolutely no different from a regular pool, except in a regular pool the people have nasty fabric floating near their naked bodies.

Alyoshka stayed luckily in bed, but while he slept, I was gathering intel. I've been feeling that Alyoshka could maybe European-ize his style, so I was comparing and examining the current trends, discretely of course. I'll report back on this later. Oh, and my readers will be pleased to know that German women do in fact shave their armpits, but so do the men.

The sauna was really relaxing, and I actually got to the point where seeing people with clothes on made them look weird. There were several Adonises, but all in all the people looked like normal people you would see on the street. That made it a lot more enjoyable, honestly. It was open and honest and comfortable. If you ever get the chance, I would highly recommend going to a nude sauna. Nude saunas knock the pants off of regular saunas....get it?