Germany, the country which brought us the luxury of travelling by Zeppelin, has once again broken-ground for aeronautical feats: OssieUrlab.de, a specialty chartering agency, will soon start a trial plane service where… passengers can fly naked.
Why didn’t I think of that?
German nudists will be able to start their holidays early by stripping off on the plane if they take up a new offer from an eastern German travel firm.
Travel agency OssiUrlaub.de said it would start taking bookings from Friday for a trial nudist day trip from the eastern German town of Erfurt to the popular Baltic Sea resort of Usedom, planned for July 5 and costing 499 euros ($735).
I was about to crack some adolescent joke about the difficulty of smuggling bombs onto such a flight, but I figure most of you are wry enough to come-up with something like that on your own.
I have to admit I didn’t know much about nudism in Germany. A BBC report on the same item says the following:
As early as the 1890s, the world-renowned “father of nudism” sociologist Heinrich Pudor was writing about stripping off and getting back to nature. Nudist colonies have existed in Germany for more than a century.
You learn something new around here every day, don’t you?
Furthermore, the MSNBC article is kind enough to fill-in a few more details:
Naturism, or “free body culture” (FKK) as it is known in Germany, was banned by the Nazis but blossomed again after the Second World War, particularly in eastern Germany.
Not surprising, that. The Nazis had a real animus towards anything which even hinted at non-vanilla sex; demagogues have a talent for exploiting hot-buttons like shame and offense-taking. The mass-killings of gays in concentration camps (source of today’s pink triangle) is only the most infamous result. But if you needed yet more reasons to despise the Nazis, you might be interested in knowing that in February, 1933 one of the first acts of Hitler’s government was a decree which banned almost every kind of pornography. Later that year, intending to cleanse all libraries of un-German books, brownshirted toughs raided the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, a world-famous center for sexual study and advocacy. They confiscated thousands of volumes from its archives and added them to their first mass book-burning in Opera Square on May 10th. The Nazis even passed laws against swimming in the nude, for Pete’s sake.
If they taught that kind of stuff in high school history, I think more kids would pay attention.
But I digress. In the MSNBC report, what cracked me up about flying in the nude was this line about the plane’s staff:
The crew will remain clothed throughout the flight for safety reasons.
Really thoughtful of them to put safety first, but I’m not sure exactly what kind of concerns they’re talking about. Any flight attendants out there who can satisfy my curiosity?
4 COMMENTS
Leave A CommentWild. The only possible “safety” reason I can think of is that uniforms create a psychological sense of power. A lay person in regular street clothes looking at a person in a uniform may subconsciously feel that person in a uniform has more power than they do. If the flight attendants were all nude as well as the passengers, then everyone is equal which could in theory be a security risk since there is no dominance. I dunno. I’m just rambling. I simply can’t imagine anyone from Al Qaeda getting naked on board one of these flight however.
I guess it’s sorta like when you see that 64 year old security guard with a limp at a bank. You know damn well you could take him in a fight, but he’s wearing a badge and carries a flash light so you proceed with caution and look for the next bank to rob. Er. I mean…
Yeah, he’s got that flashlight, he does.
He might shine it in your eyes or something.
Gawd, I hope they turn up the heat on that plane…lol Even fully clothed it can be a bit chilly in them.
I’m with Jason and Kim lol. Thankfully I don’t see myself ever going nude in “public” so I don’t see this being a problem but just the thought of running into an old man stark naked is a bit startling. And geez do those planes get cold, everyone would be rocking nipples that could cut glass!