It was 1978. My vagabuddy Gene and I were heading for a Turkish bath. With tattered towel around my waist, I walked gingerly across slippery marble into a steamy world of shadowy Turks under Byzantine domes. I felt gawky ... and more naked than naked. After an awkward sit in the sauna, a muscular Turk, who doled out massages like cannery workers gut salmon, laid me onto a round marble slab. With a loud slap, he landed on me, his hands working as if kneading dough in a prison bakery. He smashed and stretched each of my tight muscles. Finally, like lobotomized Gumbys, we were led to marble thrones to be doused in hot water and scrubbed with coarse mittens. Dirt curled off of us in rolls. Finally, we emerged onto the streets of Istanbul, cleaner than we'd ever been. Any traveler to Europe who's visited a bath, perused a newsstand, hung out at a beach or park on a sunny day, or channel-surfed broadcast TV late at night has noticed that Europeans are more relaxed than Americans about nudity. In the south of France, sunbathing grandmothers have no tan lines. In Norway, young children play naked in fountains. On summer days, accountants in Munich head to the park on their lunch break to grin and bare it, trading corporate suits for birthday suits. It's quite a shock to Americans (they're the ones riding their bikes into the river and trees). http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/07/13/european.nudes/index.html?hpt=C2&fbid=T8ldDyiYlfK
