Bathrobes / Bademäntel

It is European fashion to wear a bathrobe when you go to a swimming pool. We were very aware of it in Prague and in Turkey, where bathrobes were provided for the adults, and everyone but us wore them to the pool. The children all travel with their own bathrobes, which Nikolas has envied for some time now.

While it looked odd to us, at first, it seems rather normal now to see people parading around hotels in bathrobes either heading to or heading back from the swimming pool. We’ve joined the ranks of European bathrobe wearers, my parents giving us a pair of bathrobes while they were here. We picked up a robe for Nikolas at a flea market, and so now we are a family of bathrobe wearers.

Now that we’ve experienced it, I don’t know how we’ll ever go back. It’s so much easier than wrapping yourself up in a towel or putting a t-shirt or shorts or sarong over a wet bathing suit or simply scurrying back to your room, wet and cold. I suppose if we get some funny looks at the Glenview pool or the Quarry, we can just speak German to each other and people will just think, “Those Germans and their bathrobes…”