The Austrian Spa

A memory of traveling in Austria and a nude surprise!

Several decades ago, my wife and I were fortunate enough to fall into a group tour of Germany and Austria with 40 others from our state. We flew into Munich and took a motor coach down to the Alps, across into Austria, and eventually to Kitzbuhel.

This alpine town is a cross between the fields and hills seen in The Sound of Music and the ski slopes seen in For Your Eyes Only or On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

But this was the off season, after all the snow had melted, and the dairy farms were starting up. We were able to tour a Bavarian farm where they made cheese and milk and chocolate. And a beer hall where the men wore leaderhosen and suspenders.

Kitsbuhel is known as the place where a notable death occurred in 1971. A relation of notable actor and former Mr. Universe Arnold Swartzenager was buried there, after a motor vehicle accident. You could find his tombstone in the church graveyard if you know where to look. And we did.

So we were being housed in a hotel during the final two weeks of their seasonal operation before shutting down. The beds were LOW by American standards, and the meals were served banquet style along long wooden tables. All 40 of us fit around three long tables.

I had noted when we pulled up that there was a nightclub just off the back of this three story hotel that featured a neon sign for girls, girls, girls. While I always wanted to stick my head inside to see just what kind of a place this was, I never did get a chance to slip away.

Instead, one morning before our daily excursion up and down the auto-bon to see castles, an inclined railway or Salzburg, I was intrigued by a sign that simply read “SPA” and pointed downstairs. So I left the lobby and walked down the long wide steps into what opened up to be in indoor pool with a wide deck around the inside. The sound of waves echoed in the hard walls and tile floor, and I descend farther and farther down the staircase.

As I looked over the railing, I noticed there was just one guest laying on the lounge chair that was leaned all the way back. It was with a jolt that I realized that the shapely figure was totally nude.

I mean, this young woman was naked as a jay bird and very attractive, in her 20s or 30s at latest. And she was reclining by herself on a large beach towel facing the pool. I froze in my steps, thinking that I must have missed something, a sign reading Fraulein Only or Men Verboten or something. But no, I had missed no signs except for the one sign on the wall at the top of the stairs which read “SPA” and pointed downwards.

I backed away from the railing and with a single glance around the empty and brightly lit pool, I returned up the steps to where our party of 40 were boarding the motor coach. I stepped quickly to the main reception desk, and asked if the SPA downstairs was open. “Yah, der Spa is open still,” was the response from the desk clerk.

“Is it only for women?” I asked, but he didn’t seem to get my point at first.

A voice called to me to come board the bus as they wanted to be off, so I had to step away from the desk, but I tried one more time, “Is it a nude spa? Is nudity normal in the spa?” The clerk still didn’t get it, but conferred with his associate. “Yah, the pool is downstairs,” they both nodded, but I wasn’t sure that they understood my question.

I boarded the bus and found my seat as the motor coach pulled out.

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Everywhere we went, there were posters and advertisements crowding bulletin boards, wooden fences and billboards. Most seemed to be promoting events, concerts, bands or bars, but one stuck out on scarlet cardboard. It was everywhere we went. It read “SEX SHOW” and referred to a couple of days in Munich, which was quite some distance from us. But these signs were very noticeable and bright. They stuck out! And there were everywhere we went, except for Salzburg.

If I had a chance, I was going to pull one down and stow it in my suitcase to bring home with me. But first, I wanted to ask the tour guide about it.

She was a British young lady with dual citizenship. She spoke fluent German and English with a slight British accent. When we first met her, she was dressed in a Bavarian dress, like a local milk maiden or the “Swiss Miss” chocolate logo. She was quick and bright, and a local tourist guide hired by the company to shepherd us around the tour in her country. When she wanted to be, she was a stern taskmaster, and kept us organized and on schedule. She also was tactful and polite, answering all questions.

So I approached her and quietly asked what all the bright, scarlet posters for “SEX SHOW” were about. She struggled for the right words, but soon got it across that this was a media blitz that had just started this month. It was promoting an event in a large auditorium at fairgrounds that was hosting a… (she struggled for the right word here)…a bizarre for all things sexual.

The light came on in my head and I clarified, “You mean, like leather goods, vibrators, sex toys, and the like.”

“Yes,” she agreed, clearly relieved that I had understood her and not taken offense.
”Well,” I said, “They certainly know how to attract attention with those loud posters, don’t they? I’ve seem them everywhere we have gone… Munich, Austria, Salzburg…
”Salzburg?!” she asked? And I realized that was the one place we DIDN’T see them.

“I though not,” she confirmed. “Too conservative a town.”

“Well they wouldn’t last in America,” I stated. “That wouldn’t be permitted in the States,” I stated.

“Oh, why not,” she asked? And I realized that she wasn’t putting me on, but was genuinely asking what the problem was.

“Well,” I explained, sweeping my hand at our tour group, none of whom had been listening to our conversation… “where we are from, those items would not be sold openly , but you would have to seek them out, in what’s known as ‘Adult Bookstores’ or ordered on-line through the internet.”

“Oh, you’d have to pay admission to go to this fair,” she explained. “You’d have to seek them out here too.”

“But, you wouldn’t see scarlet posters screaming SEX SHOW everywhere,” I explained, but then immediately thought of billboards along the highway promoting The Lion’s Den chain of adult bookstores in the US. And I realized that I was wrong.

Anyway, she had answered my question, and I almost dropped the conversation, when I thought I’d ask her about the SPA. “Just before we boarded this morning, I followed the sign down the steps to the Spa where the indoor pool is.” She looked up at me expectantly, but not eager. Her face betrayed nothing but casual interest. “Yah? It’s closed, isn’t it?”

“Well, as I rounded the last of the steps, I came across a young lady reclining on a deck chair….(now I struggled for the right non-offensive expression)…in the all-together.”

“Yah, so?” inquired my hostess.

“Well, is that normal? Is the Spa normally in the nude?” I asked, “or just for women?”

“Well, the spa is closed now, as this is the end of the season. Until last week, it had been open and operating,” she stated. “We are just renting the hotel upstairs.”

“But, is one expected to be nude in the spa, or is it just a women’s spa,” I pressed.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she started. And I tried again from a different angle.

“In the West, there are resorts and campgrounds that cater to those who enjoy going nude, either in nature or around a pool. They are called nudists or naturists, and I understand that you have them here in Europe as well.”

“Yah, the FFF,” she confirmed, and the light bulb came on in my head.

“YES,” I affirmed, “but in the U.S. it is known as the American Sunbathing Association or ASA. Is the FFF well-respected here?”

“Oh, they are well known here, as a philosophy of living with nature,” she explained.

I thought she was unusually well informed on the subject, and it occurred to me that since we had met her, she no longer was wearing the Bavarian dress, but had changed to tight fitting jeans and a smart top that accentuated her figure. And I realized that here was a young lady in a ski resort town who spoke two languages and clearly was fit and in shape. Of course she knew of the FFF… as she was part of the healthy young adults that flocked to Kitzbuhel each year.

I so wanted to ask her if she had visited, but she beat me to it. “Do you attend,” she asked quietly?

“Yes,” I affirmed, “but the rest of these tourists would not know that. They are far too conservative, and frankly too old for the naturist movement. If they knew of my wife and my involvement, I would probably loose my job,” I admitted quietly.

“Oh, that’s a shame,” she said, and added with a wink, ‘Your secret is safe with me.”

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I never learned if I was spot on in my conclusion about our hostess, but I felt certain that I was on the mark. Else-when during the week we spent together, she made reference to a music video for a German celebrity musician that she had appeared in. “Hansi Hinterseer” was attempting to film a music video in Kitzbuhel in a rooftop restaurant. They had hired a dozen or so attractive young blonde women all in Bavarian dresses to fawn over him and pursue him (much like the young women in the Beatle’s movie “A Hard Days’ Night”.)

In a sequence of slapstick scene, Hansi would be singing atop a roof top bar with a view of the Kitzbuhel Horn in the background. The young women would constantly be flirting with him or trying to corner him, but he would escape each time, sometime avoiding the crowd, or diving under their legs, or making similar half-hearted avoidance moves.

But the point of relating this video, which you can actually find on YouTube, is that in the background of the video on the rooftop plaza, leaning on a railing, is a brunette that is never shown in close-up like the blonde blue-eyed Bavarian girls. This brunette has curled hair and is wearing a Bavarian dress. And if you know who you are looking for, it was our tour guide. Either she had been hired for the shoot, or she was their local guide for the production team, or she might have been dating Hansi at the time. We never knew which, but she did remark with a snort that Hansi thought he was rather full of himself, which she didn’t explain. So if you want to go see her, she’s in the background of a few shots during his music video. (But I am having trouble finding it among the dozens of German music videos that feature Hansi on-line now.)