As a young American service member in the 1980s in Berlin, nudity culture there shocked me! For a minute.

I didn't know anything about northern European tropes about health and nudity. But it didn't take me long to learn that if I were walking through big public parks, I was more than likely to stumble on a group of people sunbathing or playing volleyball nude.

I quickly learned that Germans considered clothing in saunas, steam baths, and cold plunges to be unhygienic. Nudity in appropriate settings was expected and seen as virtuous.

Then, when traveling around Europe, I realized that nude beaches were just everywhere. In the Greek islands I spent time on, almost every beach was optionally nude toward one end.

Imagine my surprise one day in Provincetown in the mid 90s when I encountered a German family changing into swimwear at Race Point Beach. I felt the need to stroll over and warn them that if federal park ranges spotted them doing that, they could get a ticket or even go to jail.

That helped remind me that our American values about nudity are hardly universal!