No, it’s not a joke; a German travel agency is now accepting reservations for nude air travel and flights are scheduled to commence this summer. Wired.com is reporting that a new travel agency called Freikorperkultur (roughly translated: Free Body Culture) is offering all-nude air travel to the Baltic island of Usedom.
Although nudism has been very popular in Germany for decades, the new travel agency is the first attempt at nude airline flights in German history. In fact, the flights to Udedom will be the first nude air travel to a European destination. A competing company, Nude-Air, offered a similar nude flight to Mexico back in 2003, and continues to advertise “naked travel” to Mexican vacation destinations.
Enrico Hess, the company’s founder says the idea for the nude flights came from a customer, and is filling an “unusual gap in the market.” The first nude flight will be on July 5 of this year. The cost? €499. The crew on board the flight will remain fully closed for “safety reasons,” according to Hess. And passengers will have to remain fully clothed at the airport, only being allowed to disrobe after boarding the plane.
Hess emphasizes that the nude flight is not an excuse to join the mile high club; “it’s not that we’re starting a swingers club in mid-air or something like that.” Passengers have to remain fully clothed until the plane is boarded, and they must be fully clothed again before being allowed to exit the aircraft.
So why is it that the Germans seem to be so wild about nudism? I suppose there are a lot of theories one could expound upon, but perhaps German culture itself has something to do with it. Germany is famous for being a pragmatic and highly organized society, with strict social rules or “unwritten laws.”
It could be that the German citizen’s fascination with nudism is a type of backlash against the stricter, and more repressive aspects of their culture. After all, what could be more free and liberating than walking around completely nude? Actually, I can tell you what would be more free and liberating: being completely nude on an airplane cruising at 30,000 feet above the Baltic Sea!
So far, there are no attempts to bring “naked air travel” to the United States, though several US nudist organizations have requested that the German travel agency expand into North America. For now, American nudist who want to fly the friendly skies sans clothes will have to take a trip to Europe, where nudist culture is far more common and accepted than in the United States.
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This idea is so sick that I cannot believe it’s actually happening.
Comment by catholic gifts — February 19, 2008 @ 11:20 pm