Amusing saga of public bathing in Berlin

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Newspaper editors aim to provide eye-catching headlines, and there have been several of those covering a story from Berlin, Germany, in recent days. Or maybe the ‘uncovering’ aspect caught the world’s attention.

Associated Press wrapped up all the details with: ‘Berlin to let everyone go topless at swimming pools after woman’s complaint’. Google research revealed cities in Europe, North America and beyond with similar legislation relating to public swimming pools; Göttingen being the first in Germany last year.

My own memories of Germany are all very positive, dating back over six decades ago, when working on freighters out of Liverpool and visiting European ports on a regular basis carrying cargo to and from West Africa. The favourite port of call for red-blooded, young sailors was Hamburg, where all the action was taking place.

Several soon-to-be-famous musical groups from Liverpool worked in the Reeperbahn entertainment district, where music clubs were interspersed with strip clubs. In some clubs the band from Liverpool provided music for German girls doing the fan dance and other eye-catching performances.

Apart from the awful 30-year period that spanned the two World Wars, German people always seemed to be very friendly, industrious, innovative, humorous and well-organised. It’s always puzzling how they were led astray by a certain Austrian house painter and sometime artist, whose high-pitched rants indicated that his underwear was way too tight.

Now, all these years later, with the ‘woke’ way of thinking about discrimination prevalent everywhere, it’s both amazing and amusing that only one woman can complain about females and non-binary swimmers having to cover their torsos while males go topless, and have all the rules immediately changed.

The pendulum seems to have swung in a completely different direction in lifting Berlin’s blindfold banning beguiling bare-breasted bathing banality.

BERNIE SMITH

Parksville, BC

Canada