German Nude Beaches

I was told we were going to a normal German beach, but I had no idea a normal beach was about 60% nude and if you were wearing a swim suit you were in the minority. Shortly after arriving in Berlin I learned that expats like myself find most of their community events here on the local couchsurfing website under the “Berlin Groups” section. After that I began reviewing posts the Berlin groups area on an almost daily basis and discovered a small group heading to the northern Germany where it meets the Baltic sea. There is a large public beach just off the small town of Warnemünde.

We arrived around noon and made our way down the beach looking for a clear area to setup. We had five people in our group, two from Germany, one from Russia, one from Brazil and me. We setup our shade and beach towels and ate some snacks while discussing the beach.

German View of Nudity

The local Germans explained to us how Germans view nudity as natural. As I looked around, that certainly seemed to be the case as over half of the people were not wearing swim suits. At one point an old man scolded us in German for wearing swimsuits although earlier we had seen a sign stating that this was not a nude beach and there were fines for nudity. But alas, apparently when over 50% of the people disregard a sign it becomes difficult to enforce. I would say that the beach police look the other way, but I suspect it is the opposite in they are gawking like the rest of us. It wasn’t just one age group either. I saw kids only a few years old running around playing the water and sand, girls in early teens naked and high school age girls. Afterwards I realized that I never saw anyone over 60 with clothes on. I’m guessing the older folks just don’t care and want to do whatever they like. Apparently the German guy didn’t think to bring a swimsuit and when it came time for our group to hit the water, he just took off his clothes and ran in! I wasn’t so brave and wore my suit the entire time. I have to say that I was tempted to try taking off my clothes and suspect I would have if the others in my small group did. But I was not brave and just lay there in my swimsuit gawking at the people walking past.