Growing up in a Catholic household, I was taught that it was indecent to bare any "naked skin," as it was termed. That means never walk around the house without any clothes, never around your room, and only if you must in the bathroom. Luckily, we were in California. Okay, so you still had your hippies in the 70s, but by now they kept to themselves or away from the public eye whenever needed. We had four or five TV stations, nothing like HBO, so that the only naked creatures we saw were on Sesame Street, and many of those muppets were even dressed.

Playboy? Never heard of it? Naked statues? Not around here. I remember once walking in on my mother in the bathroom without knowing who was behind that door and I swear I can still hear the echoes of that door slamming. There was a zero-tolerance policy toward nudity, end of story, end of psalm.

Fast forward to Germany: it's my first trip to Munich, a real German city and a traditional Catholic stronghold. My aunt Hanni and Uncle Werner are terrific hosts. We visit the Frauenkirche, the Olympic Village, the English Garden. The English Garden was absolutely gorgeous. This was man and nature in perfect harmony. As I am scanning the trees and bridges of the garden, in addition to the glitter of the river Isar winding through the park, I stare straight ahead and immediately snap my head back, as if I had just sniffed ammonia. I slowly, slowly pivot back again while my relatives are pushing my sisters on the swings. Straight ahead, there's this couple strolling along the river. They sure look happy, I'm thinking. They also are as naked as the day they were born on, and for a moment I wonder if I am in the garden of Eden. Any snakes anywhere? 

I shake the vision out of my head, climb up a slide to distract myself from what I had just seen. That only exacerbated things, because now I had a better view. There must have been dozens of naked sunbathers, in every position: standing, walking, lying down, kneeling, wading through the Isar. Later, I tell my cousin in confidence (no way am I telling my mom's sister) that I saw someone naked in the English Garden. Joachim, my cousin, simply nodded. That was a nude beach, he explained. Perfectly legal. Say what?

So it goes. Now every park has nude sunbathers, Frankfurt included. And now I shrug it off when my kids point out there is a naked man in the grass over there. I don't necessarily think that Germans are exhibitionists, but I also don't believe they subscribe to the beliefs of my Catholic upbringing, either, that nudity is something to avoid. You get used to it, although the little Catholic boy is still not comfortable with it.

In Germany, the word is FKK - Freikörperkultur, free body culture, or nudist colonies. Those are the three letters you need to be aware of in Germany...or welcome, depending on your perspective. According to polls, Germany is the country that is most tolerant of FKK. One-third of all Germans admitted to having been nude in public at least once. Nudity as such is tolerated, for the most part, and the shirts, shorts, and shoes policy rarely enforced. And this under a conservative federal government that's ruled for 15 years and counting now.

The bottom line is that people are not rubbing this in your face, but that there's a different perspective. In quite a literal sense.