Fun & Famous

Traumas of the nude campsite

Convinced nudists should stop reading now, because there follows no hymn to your hobby. Sorry. I might not find you necessarily weird, but that flashing with your private parts, I just don't get it.

Maybe I'm too young, and under false pretenses I came into contact with it once, but I really don't understand it at all. It all happened like this. I was supposed to go with my childhood friend to her little house in southern France near the perfume town of Grasse. I would arrive by bus in Cannes. It all sounded incredibly Saint Tropez to me and I threw all my light dresses and sun hats into my big weekend bag.

What turned out? None of that. A bumpy gravel path brought me after an hour and a half of U-turns and hairpin bends to the house. Also known as the house without electricity. And the house without water. And the house without a toilet. And the house with residents without clothes.

Let me not be negative about everything, because it was of course very sweet that I could go on vacation for two weeks (just as sweet as this), but there was no toilet (I repeat: no toilet. Not in the wide vicinity either) and that image of my friend's mother who filled our plates with macaroni with an exuberant triangle peeking just above the table, I just couldn't handle it. Not then, not now, never.

I have rarely laughed as hard as at the story of my colleague G. She went touring through Sweden with her boyfriend in a camper. One day, everything went wrong. They drove for hours and hours and hours and couldn't find a good campsite. When it started to get dark (and in Sweden, it really gets late, you should know), he stopped somewhere. A ‘naturcamping’. A nudist campsite, that is. She of course had no desire for that, but now she wanted to sleep and tomorrow was another day. Then she would see it all further.

She woke up to chirping children's voices and yes, indeed, as if it weren't true, they were frolicking around naked. And my friend's camper cupboards were totally in echo mode, so she had to go to the camping store. In her birthday suit. There was no other choice. She sighed deeply, and once more. Clamped her wallet under her armpit (where else do you put that thing in your complete nakedness) and set off towards the local store.

Two baguettes in her basket, a can of hot dogs and yes, there was the cashier. In a cashier outfit. You read that right. She was wearing clothes. And the other customers too. ‘Natur’ from naturcamping stood for nature lovers, not for nudists. My friend thought of only one thing: how do I get out of here? Well, and one more thing then. Should she step over the chain of the closed cash register or, given the total lack of coverage on her body, better go underneath?

With a speed that Dafne Schippers could still learn from, she dashed to her camper. There she saw her boyfriend. Naked. Completely adapted and integrated, he was checking the oil level of their camper in his birthday suit. She saw his muscular legs that he had spread a bit and his upper body was bent forward. Actually, G mainly saw his two balls dangling at the top of his legs. We. Need. To. Get. Out. Of. Here. Now.

The nudist campsite and us may not be a good marriage, but it's always good for a few juicy stories at parties and gatherings.