Europe Is Naked (Parts Of It, Anyway)

I don't think all Americans realize what it's like over there. (Or for that matter, over here in some parts of the US.)

I went to Europe in 1989-90, (supposedly) to attend the University of Bonn. Public nudity wasn't prohibited at all in many European countries. There were naked people on regular broadcast TV, much more naked than the "partial nudity" which was on American broadcast TV for a few years in the mid-90's, starting with "NYPD Blue." Public topless sunbathing occasioned barely a batted eye -- except of course on the part of people visiting from prudish places like much of the US. The changing areas at public swimming pools were segregated by gender, men and boys over here and women and girls over there -- but they were not enclosed. There were great big T&A posters in the main train station downtown, bigger than life-size.

By the end of my year in Bonn, with some excursions to Paris and other places, I had seen so much public nudity, photographed and on video and irl, without having had to go the slightest bit out of my way to see it, that it had become kind of boring. Also, the viewer doesn't get to pick which people go around naked. So you see some stuff that nobody wants to see.

There's an annual day in London where big crowds of people get naked, frolic in fountains etc. I think it might be summer solstice. One gentleman was (is? I don't know if he's still around) somewhat famous for going about his business every day in London carrying a briefcase and umbrella and wearing nothing but a bowler hat, black socks and black shoes.

Somewhere in rural Germany in the 1990's there was a bodybuilder who liked to go around completely naked. Some local prude complained and complained until the police felt forced to arrest him. This case made nationwide headlines -- not because the guy was going around naked, but because the bodybuilder, who was generally thought of as a harmless eccentric, had been arrested for no good reason. I don't understand the legalities involved here, whether public nudity actually is illegal in Germany, but the law is hardly ever enforced, like the laws in some American towns requiring horses to wear pants, or what.

That's how things were in the 1990's, at least. I suppose it's possible that since then, Europe has become more prudish. But not bloody likely, I would guess.

I should not be talking about the entire continent at once like this, because some European countries actually are more prudish than others. I would imagine that in some parts of Europe, you can get into trouble for taking off your clothes. It's just that in other parts -- you can't.

So if you're naked on a train in Europe, be careful if the train crosses a international boundary into a more prudish place.

And of course: some American cities and regions are much more "European" than others. Apparently there is no prohibition of public nudity in California, for example, unless a local lawkmaking body imposes such a prohibition. Now and then, here and there in the US, groups of people go naked in order to protest something, or in the interest of art or what have you. In some places they are arrested, and in other places, even if local laws prohibit public nudity, those laws have not been enforced.

Hollyvood Crepp?

In The Bourne Supremacy,(the movie), (2004), the killers, Bourne and the others, in Europe and India, carry around huge piles of dollars. Not Euros. In Russia, the Russian cab driver at the airport asks Bourne, in Russian, "Dollars or rubles?" Bourne sez dollars and off they go. It's not clear whether the cabbie would bother to move for rubles.

Nobody mentions Euros. Is this strictly realistic? In Russia in 2004? Even in 2013, after 4 years of Obama restoring the dollar and several years of the Euro going ka-plooey, and even though I live in the middle of the US, if someone asked me if I wanted Euros or dollars, I'm not sure I wouldn't say Euros.

(Some Russian cabbies may have turned down rubles in the early 1990's, but in 2004? Really?)

In The Bourne Identitya freshly-amnesiac Bourne opens a safe-deposit box, and for the length of a tantalizing brief shot we see, under the pistol and among all the fake passports, piles of dollars and of other currency. I had assumed Euros were in there, but The Bourne Identity was released in the summer of 2002, when Euros had only been in circulation since January, and this scene was in winter, and who knows how long Jason had been out of touch with reality while the contents of that box waited there, so hmm. It was a Swiss bank, maybe we were meant to think Swiss francs. Bourne offers Franke Potente dollars to help him evade apparently every police force on Earth, plus rogue mutant assassins like himself, on his way from Switzerland to France. No mention of francs, Swiss or French, or Deutschmarks, although she's German.

Really?

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe dollars still go perfectly well with big stacks of fake passports of many countries. Or maybe right at this moment a German, a French person and an Italian are watching The Bourne Supremacy together, and the German just can't take it anymore and is beginning to yell at the TV screen: "Vat ze fuck?! Dollars, dollars, dollars -- you're in fuckink Europe! Not even gonna mention Euros? Zis iss supposed to be some great realistic Euro-thriller?! Hollyvood shit in Europe iss vat it iss! Franke, how could you go along viss ziss?! Mebbe she didn't go along viss it, end zett's vy she's not in ze sird vun. Hollyvood crepp!"