I’m finally updating information on Berlin, the most naturist-friendly city in my opinion, and I’ll start with its main park Tiergarten in the very centre of the city. Given the park’s central location, it is easy to get there from pretty much anywhere around, so you could even come there after work or on a lunch break for some relaxed sunbathing on one of a few known FKK meadows (Freikörperkultur translates as Free Body Culture) south of Straße des 17 Juni. In the first half of the day, you can also refresh in one of those “showers” from sprinklers on the lawns throughout the park,
but one of the meadows has a proper shower installed.
The lawns of Tiergarten are perfect for frisbee, ball games, badminton and its new faster counterpart, speedminton. By the way, speedminton was invented in Berlin, so playing it in the centre of the city a la FKK sounds very authentic 😉
Joe and I used to play speedminton in Tiergarten pretty often, as you can see even rain wouldn’t stop us!
If you want to try something more ancient, how about naked oil wrestling? Tam and I certainly had fun reviving the Ancient Greek tradition.
As I had very little experience in wrestling, it was more of a lesson for me from Tam, but the very slippery aspect of oil wrestling was new to him too.
Given that it was olive oil, this exercise must have served as a nice skin rub too.
Despite the oil, we still managed to grip each other,
and each of us (but mostly me) got thrown on the grass too a few times.
The latter was more difficult staying lower with knees on the ground in our final match.
On another occasion, we wrestled two against one, but we certainly need more practice.
Another activity that proved to be fun in Tiergarten was acro-yoga.
We kicked off with some simple threesome poses.
After my incident with getting a fine for doing acro-yoga naked in San Francisco, it felt very liberating to do the same thing in Berlin with even more people and not being worried of getting caught by police! We had fun, and our nakedness only enhanced it.
Below is a good example of how good positioning that comes with experience lets even a much lighter ‘base’ person hold a heavier ‘flyer’.
However, when the flyer is much lighter, even the arms may be enough to support the flyer.
(Excuse our friend for clothes, but she didn’t feel like undressing at that moment.)
Some of the poses did not only feel relaxing (for the flyer at least),
but also provided opportunity to suntan those hard to reach places 😀
Some poses may seem simple but are fun to maintain,
and the next step is to learn to transition them into a totally different pose.
Such dynamic exercises are much more challenging for the base,
whereas the flyer should follow his directions and enjoy the ride
until he ends up in yet another unusual but stable pose.
This pose below serves as an excellent back and hip stretch for the flyer.
Here are some standing acro-yoga poses, starting from simple
to a more difficult balancing exercise.
Standing on shoulders of another person is probably one of those things that seem scary and challenging primarily for ‘mental’ reasons,
as the weight is the same as when you sit on the shoulders and the height isn’t that dangerous if you decide to jump off. I decided to avoid it though, due to my not fully recovered ankle.
Sean and Tam made it look easy from the first time!
Here is another pose that combines balancing and stretch (and transitioning into it is kind of scary).
Once you’re in the pose, don’t forget to point your toes (if you’re the flyer)!
We ended our session that time with the ultimate balancing exercise – two bodies maintained by one pair of arms!
I hope this blogpost will inspire Berliners and visitors of the German capital to use their main urban park for naturist activities. We can only wish for anything like this in Central Park in New York, Hyde Park in London or pretty much anywhere else in the world!
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