musings on social nudity

The Train Station Game

Musings on naturist travel: Nothing in My Duffel Bag — Introduction

That’s the beauty of travel. Especially solo travel. A phenomenon that allows you to simply sink back into the fabric with your coffee and crunchy bread-like thing and literally — become invisible.

Too long — not gonna read? You can find the abbreviated version of this story on our blog, the Meandering Naturist.

I think it was Helsinki, but really… it could have been anywhere. Nearly every major city in the world has a train station, and the game plays out pretty much the same everywhere.

In this case, I remember being jetlagged and disoriented, and at least a little perturbed at what Ritazza called a large coffee, served up in something roughly the size of the Dixie Cups I remember from my childhood. Granted, it was strong, but how was I supposed to navigate a snowy January day in Finland on just a few ounces of coffee.

Truth be told, these are optimal conditions for playing the Train Station Game. Sleep deprivation with swollen, crusty eyes makes everything legitimately out of focus; more than it already is. And so, I took my meager portion of caffeine, and some breadstick-like-thing that was surprisingly crunchy, and found a little table where I could watch the morning rush-hour unfold on the platform stretching out before me.

So many people bedecked in business casual — a nuanced European varietal — rushing by with leather satchels. A young woman with a stroller in one hand, and a toddler’s small hand in the other. And the ubiquitous young lovers embracing deeply, tearfully exchanging inaudible words of endearment. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t listen in — I don’t speak Finnish. Or Estonian. Or Russian. Could have been English for all I know, but the heavy-heartedness of leaving a loved one behind transcends all language barriers. That’s simply human.

The rules of the train station game are remarkably simple:

1. Plant yourself at a corner table near all the commotion, but out of the flightpath. Your part is to see, not to be seen.

2. Shut up! This is significantly easier when you’re someplace where you have no working knowledge of the language, as you couldn’t ask a favor of the person at the next table if your life depended on it. For me, Finnish is most definitely one of those languages.

3. Watch. I love the French verb regardez, or to look. I’m certainly no expert in epistemology, but I can’t help but believe there is a common origin to the English concept of holding someone in high regard, that’s more than just looking or watching. When you look up the word regard, the definition will likely include “to consider or think about someone or something in a specific way.” I love that.

Having found that cozy spot near platform number three, tucked away from the cutting winter wind, my extremities finally began to thaw out, while lamenting that my Café Americano was fully depleted, and the prospect of maneuvering my bags over to the counter for the mere reward of another three-ounce pour seemed like more trouble than it was worth.

And besides, by now, I was already fully enmeshed in regarding the people around me. The hugging couple had shared their last kiss, but he was still standing at the end of the platform next to a placard that I assume read ticketed passengers only beyond this point. She was nowhere in sight. Predictably, a fellow with a backpack slung over his shoulder was running down the adjoining platform hoping to jump on the 8h22 before the doors closed. As the clickity-clack of the huge overhead marquee flipped to reveal an updated list of departures, the clock turned over as well, as a buzzer sounded to indicate “Doors closing!” he jumped aboard just in the nick of time.

A family meandered by with two small rolling suitcases, children pulling their own bags, including one with Winnie-the-Pooh embroidered on the back. A single panhandler came by to ask me for loose change (I had none). That phrase seems to translate regardless of the language barrier, as did my diverted gaze while shaking my head. Well beyond the efficiency of any American train station I’ve seen in my lifetime, trains left on time, electronic signboards were refreshed, and soon enough a new train had pulled in delivering more commuters, more haggard moms, more twenty-year-olds dwarfed by backpacks and bedrolls mounted on their shoulders… more humans living out their own lives one minute at a time. As I sat looking on, regarding their existence, I made up tales about their destinations, who would be waiting for them there, what stories would they tell loved ones at the end of the day. All said and done, one thing was for certain…

None of those stories would be about me.

Maybe it’s the Protestant work ethic so pervasive in my childhood home. That narrative about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, which is exactly the path my father walked before me. He was a child of the Depression. Clothes shopping at Sears was a major endeavor that was likely to involve some sort of “law away plan.” Credit cards were the mark of the devil — a sure way to land yourself on skid row.

But now, I find myself sitting in a train station in a faraway land, sipping overpriced coffee while waiting for a late morning meeting with a colleague who would take me to my 4-star hotel. My father would have never imagined such a thing. “Who in their right mind would pay more than fifty dollars for a place to sleep for the night!?”

None of those people rushing for the train could give a flip about any of that either. Another reason to keep my mouth shut! Generations back, while my parents were driving without headlights and rationing rubber and nylon for the boys fighting the good fight overseas, the entirety of Europe was in the throes of tyranny and collapse. Americans still love to wave the flag of patriotism with lingering sagas about how we liberated Europe from Hitler. But Europe has moved well beyond that, wondering how and why we, the liberators, could turn a blind eye on our own authoritarian government, not to mention the rampant disbursement of assault rifles.

But alas, I digress once more. To that young family looking to board the express train to Germany, I don’t exist. And even if I did, their salutation most certainly would not include, “Thank you for being an American! God bless you!”

None of their stories are about me. I’m significantly less than an extra in their unfolding screenplay.

That’s the beauty of travel. Especially solo travel. A phenomenon that allows you to simply sink back into the fabric with your coffee and crunchy bread-like thing and literally — become invisible. No worries about outing myself with my inability to speak Finnish, there’s no one to talk to. And Europeans aren’t crazy about small talk to begin with.

Herein lies the first lesson for the meandering naturist. Or for that matter, anyone who wishes to be a traveler instead of a tourist. Tourists appeal to — nay, require — the service and hospitality industry with the expectations of other humans meeting their needs. Travelers simply seek to exist, unnoticed, inobtrusive, acknowledging that they are not here to enrich others, but instead, to be enriched.

So there we are, then.

There are two serious takeaways from playing the train station game.

The first lesson is that despite my sense of self-importance in my personal and professional life, all these humans in the Helsinki train station (Substitute as you wish: Munich, London, Bangkok, Beijing, Mumbai, Chicago, New York) seem to be surviving at least, thriving at best in the absence of my wisdom and experience. They are living their respective lives just fine, thank you very much. It’s of little or no consequence to anyone in the entire country of Finland as to whether I had been born or not. Perhaps that sounds a bit fatalistic, existentialist even, but I actually find a sense of relief in this state of consciousness. In that moment in the train station, I only have one reason to keep breathing, and that is to take in everything I can through all of my senses. My role in that space is to absorb, to regard, to appreciate, to observe the nuance of the human condition. How beautiful is that?

As to the second lesson, I suppose this would be a good time to loop back to the prevailing idea that this is the introduction to a series of essays about social nudity and naturist travel. In this era where everyone is hyper-sensitive about issues of marginalization and objectification, (rightfully so!), we’ve all but forgotten what every artist over the past five-hundred years knew inherently…

Humans are beautiful.

Seems the Summer of Love (That was 1967 for those readers who didn’t know that.) was the last time we could utter such words without fear of slanderous condemnation. I’m not seeking to endorse those who have used and abused other humans with their lecherous behavior, physical, verbal, or otherwise, while exploiting their own positionality. That’s something altogether different. But I’ve always been fascinated with the art student who possesses the skills to draw the human form, especially that in the nude. The subtle curves of the body, the shading around the eyes, and the essence of a real person caught in the moment of simply being, requiring a purposeful fixation on a person’s distinct physical attributes that becomes the portal to artistic expression. This has been revered for as long as artists have had access to canvas.

The train station game typically takes place in a setting where people are literally layered in garments, especially during the frost-bitten mornings of Finland in the dead of winter. And still, simply watching people go about their daily lives bedecked in the proper attire for the day that lies ahead is, in the best sense, artistry in motion. While artwork focused on landscapes and structures can inspire the imagination, it’s no accident that so many artists and photographers choose people as their subjects, capturing the body language, and if adequately skillful, the subtlety of the facial expression and the depth of the eyes. The political correctness of today doesn’t permit one to say things aloud like “she’s so beautiful,” or “what a striking couple.” I’m reticent to even compliment a friend on a new outfit or hairstyle as such might be perceived as an act of objectification. But I suspect we’re all thinking such things as we regard the constant barrage of humanity we interact with on a daily basis, even inconsequentially when passing people on the street or waiting our turn in line at the supermarket.

This brings us to the second lesson in this introduction to a series of essays about nudity and naturist travel, which not so ironically, is the same as the first.

Humans are beautiful.

Among the various stigmas that permeate the incessant narratives about nudists is the underlying suspicion that people who engage in social nudity are seeking some sort of sexual gratification out of the deal, deriving pleasure related to their own (supposed) exhibitionist tendencies, or simply exploiting others by seeing them naked. Bizarrely, this is subversively reinforced time and time again by statements on social media and the mainstream press that read like, “I went to a nude beach, and I’m here to tell you, these are not the people you want to see naked!”

What a thoughtless comment, frequently uttered, but seldom regarded as inappropriate or rude. Is that not something akin to “I went to Walmart, and those are not the people I wanted to go shopping with.” Or, “I went to church on Sunday, and these are not the people I want to be caught praying with.”? Search TripAdvisor for recommendations on nude beaches and keep a tally of how many times you come across reviews like, “beware the south end of the beach where people go naked. And believe me, it’s not as sexy as you think!”

Who said it’s supposed to be sexy? Do you actually hear the words coming out of your mouth?

The act of admiring the human form has been demonized, largely through various religious ideologies, for centuries. Strangely enough, even as many have distanced themselves from faith-derived values, the stigma and the assumed motives have persisted, growing even deeper in recent years. Amidst the current political turmoil embroiled in conspiracy theories and banter about stolen elections, such paranoia has been further exacerbated by allusions to a vast, liberal agenda that condones sex trafficking and pedophilia. I’ll save the rest of this rant for a future installment, but in the meantime, who on earth could have imagined that narrative during the Summer of Love?

For those who have found a sense of liberty and vitality in social nudity, the very essence of naturism is one of unequivocal acceptance. Truth be told, at some level, we all feel ill-at-ease with our physicality, whether that be love handles, scars, birthmarks, funny toes, small breasts… whatever. The recurring story in the narrative of the ardent naturist is that at some point they simply say, “Screw it! There’s no article of clothing that will make me feel better about myself, so I may as well enjoy the sun on my skin and the breeze on my body.”

And let’s be clear. Not all naked people are naturists, and not all naturists have altruistic motives. Should you apply a similar litmus test to the aforementioned control groups of people shopping at Walmart or parishioners praying at church, your qualitative research would bear out that each person’s value system is uniquely their own, regardless of their position on nakedness, religion, or shopping. There is no such thing as a typical naturist, nor is there a uniform value system that makes some people more comfortable than others in their own skin.

If all goes according to plan, this is the first of a series of essays that are intended to read like a book, alternating between our experiences with naturist travel while pausing the travelogue chronicles now and again to tussle with the unavoidable questions so many people have about social nudity in general. Curiosity about nudity and religion, or psychology, and culture, amidst the complexities of sexuality, or even one’s ability to be comfortable looking in the mirror.

Naturists love to espouse the mantra, “When you’re all naked, you eliminate all barriers of social stratification. You can’t tell who’s a doctor and who’s a custodian.” (Another incredibly awkward and inappropriate statement if you ask me, but it’s repeated all the time, even in literature advocating for social nudity.)

I wrote a blog post a few years ago about people watching at the German spa. I don’t speak enough German to recognize the most obvious inconsistencies of linguistic dialects delineating geographical and social status, but even when people are buck naked and speaking in a language I don’t understand, I can usually still read who they are and how they fit into the global fabric of humanity, if only by body language alone. We are not all the same, even when we’re naked, and pretending that we are undermines the very essence a communal life — expanding one’s horizons through the eyes of someone different that you.

Aha!… the train station game.

Ironically, at least for us, it’s not actually the nakedness that has made naturist travel so intoxicating, but the interactions with like-minded people who actually seek out a place to get naked. They’ve searched the web, talked to their friends, read a few travel essays and said, “Let’s not stay at the Ibis Hotel in Bordeaux and sign-up for the three-day winery excursion. Let’s take the coastal road instead, out to that naturist resort and spend a couple weeks living in a modest chalet amidst the pine trees where we don’t have to bother with putting clothes on when we walk outside for that first morning stretch.”

That deliberate act of driving beyond the city limits, real and metaphorical, into some Utopian place where clothing is a needless accessory seems indicative, at least to me, of someone who desires to move beyond the entrapments of societal pressure if only to say, “I am me, and that’s all I can possibly be. Should you choose to gaze upon my physical being, naked or otherwise, I hope you are seeking — regarding — the inherent beauty of my existence.”

Are all naturists (nudists) living this existence of self-realization? Who’s to say!? Consciously, I’d say most definitely not. And we’ve certainly met people in our naturist travels who are scarcely conscious at all. It would be foolish, especially here in America, to deny that some are simply seeking some level of sexual stimulation, often fueled by inebriation, and as a result, naturists (nudists) frequently get slammed for the recklessness of such attitudes and behaviors. (Yet another forthcoming chapter about why we get naked in Europe.)

When explaining the concept of social nudity to a curious friend, I’ve taken to substituting the word sexuality with sensuality, the latter of which has a much broader horizon. Driving with the sunroof open can be a sensual experience. Having a really fine meal with a good wine is most definitely a sensual experience. Hiking in the mountains, bedecked in the proper trekking attire, is also a sensual experience, surrounded by aromatic breezes and unexpected vistas. Walking naked on the beach is a sensual experience. Walking out on the veranda for that morning stretch without bothering to get dressed is a sensual experience. Playing the train station game at the poolside bar in a naturist resort or a German spa is a sensual experience. But none of those are inherently sexual experiences unless one decides it is so. As my doctor once said to me during my annual physical, “You know, 95% of one’s libido exists between the ears. Medication can address the physical part of the equation, but your brain is responsible for the rest.”

In a naturist setting, the train station game is one of regarding all your surroundings in a way that contextualizes humanity in its most altruistic form. Ideally, one becomes invisible just as I did in that Helsinki train station, fully aware of all that’s transpiring around me, but never fixated on any singular person or thing. In the English vernacular we call that living in the moment, but I like to think that for the naturist, that moment is just a bit more visceral.

I’m hoping this series of essays on Medium will help demystify the concept of social nudity for the circumspect, while providing a few ideas and resources for the naturist-curious readers who have merely been waiting for that nudge to throw caution, and clothing, to the wind. The recurring theme will most certainly reiterate that timing and location are everything. Should one choose the wrong time or place for their first clothing-optional experience, it will likely be their last.

Conversely, if you get it right from the outset, you’ll likely come away wondering what all the fuss was about. Most find themselves feeling more beautiful and human than they had ever imagined possible. That’s how it went for us, and decades later, we’re still all in about letting it all hang out.

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