Nude Experience at an Icelandic swimming pool

[Anna]

Here is an experience that a Blogger had at an Icelandic swimming pool

http://jovannatosello.blogspot.com/2008/06/hey-i-was-only-naked-foreigner.html

http://tinyurl.com/4aynk2

Hey, I was the only naked foreigner!

I discovered my inner gymnophobe the first time I tried an Icelandic
swimming pool. I was living in Kopavogur, for the summer of 2006. I
walked into the locker room already wearing my swimming suit under my
clothes as is customary in Southern California.

I found myself alone in a large, white room, filled with lockers and
shiny white asses. I felt like a nudist colony had harpooned me in the
face. People were getting naked, very naked. Right next to me! I could
count their butt pimples. One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven…

I would like to explain that it is mandatory procedure in all
Icelandic swimming pools to wash one's private bits before entering
the water. This is explained in the Naked Androgynous Diagram below:

http://bp3.blogger.com/_dHjltVerGvo/SFqmIrnh_UI/AAAAAAAAB_I/el7TrgH8oQo/s320/pleasewash.jpg

http://tinyurl.com/4pfgr5

This process is done without a bathing suit. A rule sternly
enforced by the locker room attendant, when she caught me trying sneak
by her. It's a paid position apparently, to harass the non-naked
trying to cheat the system.

It was hard to feel normal without any clothes. Exposing places even
my mother had never seen. I found my arms migrating to the front my
body - a futile attempt to skew my full frontal.

As I left the showers I darted quickly back to my lockers. There I
grabbed my towel and quickly censored myself. It was my life
preserver. I was safe, firmly afloat in a sea full of flabby asses and
their butt pimples.

An obese woman pointed at the slippery trail I had left
behind. Then she pointed at a group of girls standing, drying
themselves in the hallway that connected the locker room to the
showers.

“You dry yourself over there.” She told me in English. I could feel
the letters F-A-I-L burning on my forehead. Feeling thoroughly
harassed, I made it a point that next time, I would complete this
process more gracefully. The next time I wouldn’t fail so terribly.

Almost two years later, I got my chance to reset my Kopavogur screw
up. I arrived in Iceland a week or two ago and I stopped at the Blue
Lagoon on the way to Reykjavik. I’m staying in Reykjavik this summer
as an animation installation artist . As much as I was excited to for
another Icelandic adventure, my mind was occupied on other things. I
was giving myself an internal prep talk during the bus ride there.
Running the routine through my head, over and over. It had to be
perfect. Seamless. I’m not a tourist!

1. Change into birthday suit

2. Stow clothing into the locker and lock

3. Put the towel onto towel rack

4. Shower and wash

5. Walk back to the towel and dry

6. Walk back to the lockers and dress

When our bus arrived, I stowed my luggage, picked out a nice locker
and I marched right up to that shower, baring all. I just ignored any
impulse to run for the hills. Yes, yes. I was very proud of my
unabashed, naked self. I had graduated out my cultural bubble.

I looked to my fellow naked comrades for a “well done”, or a “bravo!”.
Alas, there were no naked Europeans looking back me with
congratulatory smiles.

I was, in fact, the only naked person in a room. Instead, the shower
room was full of bathing-suited tourists. Who were trying very hard to
ignore my naked presence, even though they were probably counting my
butt pimples. I could hear my inner gymnaphobe having an epileptic
fit. Where the hell were those stern shower attendants?

I walked to my locker a naked gymnophobic American tourist.