Category Archives: Articles

Looking at matters of concern for the modern touristocrat in the form of short regular articles.

Packing lightly; How and where to go naked in Europe

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If you haven’t tried the wholesome and healthy world of naturism, it’ll be difficult for me to explain what’s so great about it.

If the appeal isn’t immediately obvious i totally get that; it’s a bit like how I feel about yoga; slowly changing positions on a plastic mat with a roomful of po-faced strangers looks so goofy that i find it difficult to believe that there could be anything profound or rewarding about it. And I once felt a similar way about nudism myself – how could such an irrelevant factor as the absence of fabric make such a difference?

Well, it just does. Maybe it’s sensory, maybe it’s spiritual, I don’t know – it’s just great. You’ll hear people babble on about liberation and freedom, and these are cliche, but this might be for a reason – it might just be something people always say because it’s true.

The wind-chime and joss-stick aspect is only half the story. For me at least, in the UK, nudity is almost exclusively something that happens for a couple of minutes in the shower each morning, or in an exclusively sexual context. It means that we are forced to think of our bodies as shameful, secret, dangerous and our nakedness as only having a practical or sexual purpose.

Entirely non-sexual nudity like the simple nakedness you’ll find at a naturist swim (the least “sexy” environment you could imagine and counter-intuitively just as often conservative as it is liberal in terms of the people attending) de-weaponizes your physical form, and makes it neutral again. In this way, it stops being just something you break out under cover of night, a dirty secret you share only with people you intend to have sex with. It’s just you in your most natural and simple form.

There’s no status or hierarchy among the naked, no real way to tell where people are from, what they earn, or what they do. The only way to get any meaningful kind of idea of what that person is like is to walk up to them and start a conversation to find out.

I find that level of truth and simplicity freeing, and, uh.. yeah, liberating.

If it’s something you want to try, and it’s legal and appropriate to do so, give it a whirl.

But Where? Our European cousins have it covered (or, perhaps more accurately, uncovered) and there are literally thousands of opportunities throughout the continent. Looking online however, you’ll mostly find suggestions of beaches as though that’s all there is to do but actually, there are some amazing places that you may not have thought of.

Here follow three of my favourites;

Ribersborgs Bathhouse – Malmö Sweden.

One of the few Khalbadhus left in Sweden

Perhaps the most wholesome and unambiguously healthy nude experience I’ve ever had, the sunny afternoon i spent in Sweden on a day trip from Copenhagen was among the most enjoyable afternoons I’ve ever spent. At the end of a pier overlooking the bridge to Denmark, the bathhouse was a series of pretty pastel-green clapboard changing cubicles on decking, on stilts, in the ocean. The entire cross section of Swedish society appeared to be here at the baths in gender-separated sides of the bathhouse dipping in and out of the sea and in and out of the saunas. Occasionally a brave person would dunk themselves from a bucket on a rope. Even those most opposed to naturism could see its appeal on a day like this. Best of all this costs less than almost any other activity i did in my short trip to Sweden.

How to get there: A significant but not unenjoyable walk from the Turning Tower, just make your way towards the shore and head towards the bridge to Copenhagen on the horizon. You’ll see a pier. This is easily manageable as a day trip from Copenhagen.

https://www.ribersborgskallbadhus.se/sv

Teufelssee lake, Grunewald Forest, Berlin, Germany.

The fairy-tale forests of Grunewald

In English changing rooms every day, stony-faced men enter wet from the pool. They dry their upper half and then hurriedly put a t-shirt straight on. Then, hopping on one leg, and holding up a towel as a screen to hide their nudity, they put on their underpants and trousers, managing to go from wet swimming suit to fully dressed without ever once actually having been undressed. They are never seen naked and the only time they ever see other men naked it’s in the skewed fun-house mirror world of porn. In secondary school i showered in my P.E shorts, and in the whole time i was there the idea of showering was considered so perverse by my peers and such a breach of convention that we’d regularly have Rugby first thing and then go straight into the next lesson – and the rest of the day – stinking and with mud on our necks from the field. We didn’t know any different. And British society in general condones and reinforces this – I’ve read forum posts and magazine editorials – even seen a handful of celebrity guests on BBC 2’s Room 101 pick lack of shame around nudity in changing rooms as the thing they hate most about modern life in Britain – criticising people who don’t do this dance and “stride around unashamed” as if even being incidentally naked as part of the practical process of washing and dressing is the most disgusting thing in the world. Walking through the pretty woods from Grunewald station i arrived at a clearing by a lake and i was momentarily stunned. Seeing no sign of anything but wild woodland for some time, suddenly coming across this scene was like wandering into the garden of Eden. The place was packed with hundreds of people and they were all naked. On many UK nude beaches, even ten people there is alot, and they’ll mostly be men, and they’ll mostly be in their sixties and seventies. Every possible kind of person seemed to be here though at this shimmering lake – the atmosphere was like nothing else I’ve experienced. wholesome, natural, joyful. The only people not naked were those dressing to leave, everyone else was basking in the sunshine and dipping in and out of the water happily. In those moments, to be completely and unashamedly naked, it quickly became second nature and the novelty wore off for a feeling of everything being as it was always meant to have been. I have never felt more simply or more contentedly human. The gorgeous location took on an even more magical atmosphere in the afternoon as the sun set, with wild boar coming in for a cautious but mostly respectful pick through all of the sandwiches that weren’t finished by the happy hoardes hours before.

How to get there: Take the train from the main train station in Berlin to Grunewald and be prepared for an easy but fairly long walk through the forest. You’ll know when you’re there. Watch out for boars – if you catch them on a bad day they are tusked pigs with the heart of a lion and the patience of a gorilla.

Barceloneta Beach, Barcelona, Spain.

With it’s two inner-city nude beaches and easy access to to at least 5 more in Sitges, is Barcelona the most nudist friendly minitrip destination in Europe?

When compiling this list, it crossed my mind to exclude beaches. This is because in my experience, theres only so much a beach can do to impress you. Beaches are lovely but they’re always going to be wet at one end, and dry on the other and it’s always going to be much the same experience wherever you go. There’s only so much variety you can get. It was to my horror that after the seemingly week-long flight from England to Australia and the agony of sitting still for 24 hours, I find that the beaches on the other side of the world are exactly the beaches five minutes from my house. They are just further away, and there are twenty times more things that will kill me floating in them. One beach-going experience stood above the rest, however. The beaches of Barcelona are not the only time you can experience a nudist beach in the city centre – Split in Croatia also has one – but it is the only time you can shower naked by the side of the road in the middle of a major city within a few minute’s walk from a MacDonald’s as if there’s nothing odd about that at all. If the two unsually exposed beaches in the middle of Barcelona don’t impress, head to nearby Sitges half an hour away by train where you’ll find several other options. The two nudist beaches in the middle of Sitges are absolutely worth a shot – i accidentally went during “Bear week” (not bears of the panda or polar variety) and have never been to a busier nudist beach, walking naked through the shoreline as fish swam through my legs.

How to get there: Take the train from the main train station in Barcelona to Sitges.

So thats three for you to be getting on with – even established nudists who have only ever experienced it in the Uk may find something suffiently different to be impressed by.

If you’ve never tried it – never even considered it – it’s a world of adventure waiting for you. And just think of the space you’ll be able to save if you don’t have to pack a swimsuit…

The fight between expectation and reality

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A Japanese man walks out into the cobbled streets. His sandals make contact with yet another little dog shit gateaux left stinking in the street. Aghast he steps back and bumps into a young couple with stained nicotine fingers feeding each other croissants, who glare at him and laugh derisively as they walk off to their mouldy apartment above a sex shop to noisily make love while Edith Piaf plays on a gramophone. A pigeon in a beret somehow shits into the mans’ chino pocket and onto his Louis Vuitton passport cover. A man on a moped beeps at him to get out of the road and then steals his passport as he glides past, throwing the passport cover in a puddle as he thunders off into the night to go and smoke cigarettes under the light of a lamppost. The Japanese man glares up at the twinkling Eiffel tower.

“Fuck you too, Paris!” he says and pulling out his phone, books the first flight home.

When i first heard about Paris syndrome, i went through a cycle of emotions. The first i’m afraid, was mirth – pure joyful mirth. I laughed myself inside-out at the thought of disappointed tourists from Tokyo lining up to strike the Eiffel tower with a rolled up newspaper, or buying models of the Sacre Couer to throw in the seine.

But then i took a different view. I think part of the hilarity was the assumption that it couldn’t be real – what place on Earth more closely matches it’s reputation and image than Paris? – but reading more and more accounts, i started to think that it was more of a genuine problem than i realised.

Described as “extreme shock at discovering that Paris is different from their expectations“, Paris syndrome is a form of culture shock and is believed to manifest in a variety of psychiatric symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, paranoia and even psychosomatic symptoms like dizziness, tachycardia, sweating and vomiting. It has yet to be formerly classified as a mental disorder but around 20 suspected cases appear to occur throughout France each year. Though it appears that the Condition tends to mostly affect Japanese women with very little travel experience on their first long distance trip, not much else is understood about what exactly is happening.

The way Paris is presented to the Japanese – as a heightened playground and Instagram background for immaculately dressed fashion models to serenely float across – seems mostly to blame for creating the gulf between what the sufferers expect and what they find. When i first went, it was so completely what i expected it to be that i do think it contributed to my enjoyment of the place as there’s an undeniable satisfaction in arriving somewhere to find it just how you’d imagined. My perception of Paris matched the images i’d seen of it. But my image of Paris wasn’t built from years of seeing edited Instagram posts with fake clouds, or from an era where anyone can imperceptibly alter, frame or otherwise edit the images they present from a trip. What if in the process of playing with presentation and perception we are creating a fictional version of places that reality can’t compete with?

Once when venturing to Antalya in Turkey I was seeking something out i’d briefly seen while fishing for inspiration on Pinterest. It was called “the stone mirror” and it seemed to be a street where the ground was so finely polished that it looked as though people were walking on the clouds reflected from the sky above. When I got to the street i quickly realised that it was just an ordinary dusty street – what i think had been happening is that lame optical illusion where people take a photo using the screen of a reflective electrical device to create a mirrored effect. The “stone mirror” was a monument that didn’t exist, a site that couldn’t be seen. This is a relatively new phenomenon, but there are more – recent stories tell of a temple that enterprising locals are charging people to have a picture taken in an archway in front of a reflecting pool., except just as before this is just an optical illusion and no such pool exists. The locals just hold their phones in front of the camera and before you know it their neighbourhood has a wonder of the world that people will queue in front of – even after they discover it isn’t there.

This i think presents two solutions. If the issue is in the discrepancy between what you think you’re going to find and what is actually there, the key seems to be in either not visiting somewhere that you have a strong image of so that you’re not upset if it doesn’t match up, or perhaps the answer is in not allowing whether a place is the same as you expected it to be to define whether you’re glad you went or not.

Personally i’m a happier traveller now that I’ve readjusted my expectations. I am rarely disappointed in a destination – i wonder if this is because i have a randomised approach to where i go, which means that i go places based on the desire to go somewhere more than it is to arrive somewhere specific. Or i think it might be in the sheer number of trips i make. I’ve learnt now that the success of a trip lies not in going to the “right place” but in finding what’s right about the place you’ve gone. That can be harder to do in some places than others, (i tried to find what was special about Prague but my favourite part was the flight back if i’m honest).

I think an adjustment as simple as putting the love of travel before the satisfaction of ticking off reflective roads and to other sights that don’t exist is a better way to avoid resentful evenings swearing at monuments. If only that (fictional) Japanese man had realised that Paris was not his to invent, but his to discover – it wasn’t in him, it was out there – and if he hadn’t liked that first street there were a thousand more to see. With all those possibilities you don’t need a reflective screen to see something amazing, you just need open eyes and an open mind.

The right way to travel

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Today i thought i’d tackle a subject that seems to me to be about as important a subject as any of the subjects that affect the regular traveller.

What exactly is the right way to travel?

There isn’t a right way.

Okay, well thanks for coming and i’ll see you in another six months.

It’s very possible i’m being a little facetious there, but the point i’m making is a serious one, and one that i didn’t think needed to be made until i visited a certain travel related forum. I was asking for suggestions for a future article on this very blog about places you can go where you can visit one country from another as a day trip as part of my fascination with border towns and short, intense experiences rather than longer trips in which you spend time absorbing a country in depth. To my surprise, instead of offering suggestions, the haughty denizens of the forums instead turned their attention to my throwaway description of my preferred way of travelling.

To my assertion that i felt i could get a sense of a place in a day that was in some ways as valuable to me as the sense of a place i come away with after a month, someone replied “You must have a short attention span and an overactive imagination”. The replies kept coming in and got more and more personal until eventually i was informed that i was doing it wrong, and that i was amongst other things, shallow, stupid and “not really travelling”. As many of us now know, going on the internet for any purpose has become like trying to wash your face with a fire hose, but i was genuinely surprised by the strength of the reaction and the fact that the group reached a consensus about me and about what i was saying. The message seemed to be: “you’re doing it wrong”.

In fact, that’s explicitly what they said – with one voice, i found myself condemned by the hive mind of that particular forum (naming no names, but i’m not surprised their planet is so lonely if they’re so horrible to each other).

The idea that there is a correct way to travel is just objectively wrong, more to the point there is no bad reason to travel either – whatever your motivation, whatever your destination, the value is in the getting there, and even a trip that doesn’t go to plan or isn’t enjoyable in the moment will have value in retrospect. It’s always worth going, and it doesn’t matter where. The two places i disliked the most in the last year (Prague and Geneva) had moments i’ll always remember. For those of us who worry about going and come up with lots of rational reasons not to leave the safety of our countries and homes, it can be tempting to decide that it isn’t worth the risk of having a bad trip. The last 14 of my trips have been total steps out into the unknown and I’ve chosen the destination based on what’s the cheapest – effectively letting destiny choose for me – and I’ve not regretted a single one, even if i haven’t had the greatest time.

The best advice i can give is don’t worry about making the right choice, but concentrate more on making your choice right. As a massive worrier i must say that obviously nothing is without risk and i really encourage you to do all possible research and take all possible precautions to protect yourself from the risks that come from going out into the world. But as long as you do that, all that’s left to do is to boldly go.

A guide to smart packing, in 2 simple steps

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If you’re a human – and if you aren’t, well done on somehow finding and reading this article – you probably do what we all do when doing something for the first time; You take an almost entirely random stab at the best way to do it, and if you don’t gravely injure yourself as a result, you keep doing it that way forever. You run the risk of falling into some bizarre method, someone tapping you on the shoulder when you’re 65 and asking why you’re brushing your hair with a fork and eating beans off of a hairbrush, but the criteria for assessing whether something is the “right” way to do something or not for most people is that if no-one perished as a result, then it’s a roaring success.

As proven by the minor revolution caused by Marie Kondo’s The life-changing magic of tidying (which took us all by surprise by reminding people that messy houses are less pleasant to be in than tidy ones), sometimes it’s worth going back to basics and reviewing the things we do, however simple or easy they seem to be. Sometimes it’s not about working harder at something, it’s just about doing it differently yet better. And packing your bag is an activity bursting with simple tweaks you can make, and subtle changes that can massively improve your experience.

Here are the two life-changing/obvious things i always consider:

1: You don’t need all that stuff – When i’ve packed recently, it has been for mini-breaks. These short bursts of exploration are only ever hampered by the understandable but unnecessary instinct to bring everything you might possibly need. When you do that, you end up with more than is needed because you are packing for every eventuality. You can dramatically reduce what you take by simply working out what the bear minimum you’ll need is, and only taking that. If you think you’ll be at the beach from morning to night three out of four days, do you really need more than one pair of bottoms if you’ll not be wearing them long enough to dirty them? It might seem ridiculously pedantic, but thinking in this way buys you something more precious than a few extra t-shirts: freedom. I am able now to take everything I need in a messenger bag on to the plane with me and be out of the airport swiftly, trying not to smile too smugly as I pass the people queuing to get their bag off of the conveyor belt (a bag that is only ever slightly larger than mine). Also – without that pressing need to get to your hotel to leave your bag, your adventure starts even earlier.

2: You can get things always get things there – These days, having made an effort to choose my destination according to when and where is least expensive, and to avoid paying any more than i need to on the plane by packing carefully enough to be able to bring my bag with me, i consider it reasonable to perhaps buy a few things when i’m there – as where i stay is generally near the centre, i know i can get to a local supermarket and get some needed items inexpensively. Mostly i’ll do this instead of bringing a wash-bag – most of which you will either find is provided by the place that you’re staying and if not can be picked up cheaply nearby and can be left at your hotel/hostel/guesthouse for other guests to use.

And that’s really it. There are other guides elsewhere that cover this subject that describe how rolling socks up and folding T-shirts in particular ways can get you a few more inches of space, but these guides are about increasing what you can take by cramming more in. The real epiphany that has improved my travel – added full hours of time that i can spend at my destination instead of queuing to retrieve my bag – is to see the airline cabin bag size restriction as a challenge. Each and every trip becomes not what i can get in my bag, but what i can get out of the destination and sailing out of the airport with everything i need hanging lightly at my side and no pressing need to get somewhere to dump it before i can get back out has added entire afternoons of free-time to my mini-breaks.

Now that is some life-changing magic.

Welcome On-board…

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Touristocrat 
/ˌtʊərɪˈstɒkrət
/ noun
 
An elite form of tourist favouring frequent affordable trips that put the emphasis on exploration and not relaxation.
porthole

Welcome! If you’ve ended up here, it’s probably because we have something significant in common.

Not everyone in the world understands this shared interest of ours. It may be difficult to believe but not everyone gets a thrill from holding a ticket to a new place in their hands, or spends hours in bookshops browsing the travel guides. But you get it. You know that the world is big and open and wants to be witnessed, and you want to be the one to witness it.

That makes you a member of the Touristocracy, elite travel enthusiasts that won’t let tyrannical work schedules or limited budgets get in the way of exploring this globe of ours. My unofficial sigil is a porthole because for me it has come to be the ultimate totem, the perfect symbol of  that sense of adventure and discovery and the taking of the picture shown above was the exact moment when this blog was born.

Think of this as your comfy VIP lounge on the internet. I’ll be providing the things that i’ve learnt that i can pass on to our fellow Touristocrats as well as occasional guides to different locations that we explore and discussion about the most pertinent travel related issues as they occur to us. I’d like to be your first port of call for inspiration, practical advice and i’ll even try to give you something to read on the plane on the way there.

The travel lifestyle is about planning, dreaming, booking, and going.

So lets go!

Danny