"Why didn't you tell me that everyone would be naked?"

The shocked speaker of those words, which I bet have piqued your interest, was a middle-aged Russian woman from Riga who's a friend of my wife. Her nationality is relevant because Slavs, like Yanks and Brits, not to mention Islamic fundamentalists, tend to be high on the international prudery scale. Germans are low. It was a German man, the operator of the establishment that made our heroine blush, to whom she directed her question. His incredulous answer:

"Lady, it's a sauna!"

Indeed. Why would anyone NOT be naked in a sauna? Would you take a bath in your swimsuit or wrapped in a sheet? The presence of both sexes doesn't make a scrap of difference -- in Germany, at any rate. Strange though it may seem, nude males plus nude females doth not necessarily an orgy make. Or even sexual arousal. The doings in a mixed German sauna are as chaste as in church.

OK, I admit that it took me some getting used to. My first months in Germany were an eye-opener. There I was, a red-blooded American twentysomething in Freiburg. A young fellow countryman told me about a mixed sauna that he'd seen, where everybody was naked and there was no sex whatsoever. Frankly, I thought he was bullshitting me. Come on then, I'll show you, he said. So I went. When we arrived, the sauna happened to be empty. But the solarium...

I'll never forget what I saw in the solarium. An attractive woman, wearing nothing, was lying face-up on a table. Her knees were immodestly parted. That's not what amazed me most, though. What amazed me most was a man, also wearing nothing, sitting in a chair a few feet from her, facing the space between her legs.

The man was engrossed in a newspaper.

I saw other things in Freiburg that you don't see in Ohio. A topless woman watering her garden. People sunning themselves in their birthday suits. Later, in West Berlin, it was the same. In the summer I'd sometimes go to Halensee, where a broad lawn loved by sunbathers slopes down to the lake. Some people wore bathing suits, or just the bottoms, or nada. You'd look up and, hey, a whole lotta jigglin' (and danglin') goin' on. In the beginning, I kept my jewels covered, like the bug-eyed Turkish guys.

Lesson No. 1 for foreign males in Germany: Just because a well-proportioned, unaccompanied female is lounging in the buff within arm's reach, and perusing an erotic novel, for godsakes, doesn't mean that she's approachable. Believe me. Proceed with caution.

Organized nudism originated in Germany (Germans are great organizers). The first known nudist camp opened near Lübeck in the early 20th century. Germany's best-known FKK spot (FKK is short for Freikörperkultur -- "free-body culture" -- i.e. nudism) these days is probably Munich's English Garden, a large park in the center of the city. On warm summer days, textile-free folks wander the paths and sit in the beer gardens. The number of nudists in the park has decreased in recent years, but it remains a magnet for tourists from buttoned-up countries.

The broadcast headquarters of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a nonprofit radio network funded by the U.S. Congress, were on the edge of the English Garden before moving to Prague in 1995. A friend of mine who worked there said the view out the window sometimes distracted staffers from their job promoting democratic values and institutions.

Nudists, however unconsciously, promote a democratic value too: equality. Stripped of their clothes, princes and paupers look pretty much the same. The fashionistas of the world are powerless when they're buck-ass naked. I'm not a comfirmed nudist, mind you, but I'm perfectly at ease in a mixed German sauna. So, now, is my Russian wife, who quickly overcame her fears she'd be stared at. She's been stared at only once -- when she wore a felt sauna hat.

She hasn't worn it since.