‘The German Paradox On a trip to Munich in 2009, 1 visited the sauna in my hotel. Germans love their saunas. I, too, got hooked. To research this book—I swear, it was for the sake of work—I later visited neighborhood spas in Berlin and Therme Erding, a large water park in Munichs suburbs billed as the worlds Targest sauna wonderland, with more than a dozen choices of saunas and steam rooms and a giant, warm wading pool with water jets here and there and a bar attached. Germans by the hundseds sweat and shower and lounge around. Tes not in the least bit sexual. Spas arc a matter of robust health, in the Germans’ view: They enshrine this belief under the initials FKK—Freiiirperkultur, or free body culture. That means nude. And coed. At all these facilities, the schwitzing, swimming, soaking Germans, male and female, hang together in their altogether. Which made me realize that the Germans care deeply about the privacy of everything... except their private parts.