A few days ago, a girl caught sunbathing naked on her own balcony was told that what she was doing incurred a fine. The legendary Pipi drink goes in search of said girl in order to cover her dues to the law!
You might have been naive once, as we all can be, and believed that sunbathing naked on private property was A-OK. While it might incur some raised eyebrows from passers-by and expressions of disgust from old women on their way to the fish market, if you’ve got the confidence to do it, you more than likely were totally convinced it was legal as long as it wasn’t being flaunted in a public area. It seems that isn’t exactly true.
A few days ago, a story began circulating around the Croatian media about a girl from Osijek who decided to don her birthday suit on her private balcony in order to catch some rays, and all she ended up doing was ”insulting the moral feelings of her neighbour” and being threatened with a fine by the long arm of the law. In seems that the guy she offended by removing her clothes on her own property actually went as far as to write to Glas Slavonije, a portal based in Eastern Croatia, to express his moral disgust with what he’d seen:
”Almost every day in the neighbouring building you can see a girl sunbathing naked on her balcony. It isn’t appropriate, given that families with little kids live across the street. Whenever children go out to the balcony, they have to look at nudity, so I wonder if this is forbidden by our law at all.”
Dnevnik writes that upon examining the law, the paper to which the insulted neighbour had written came upon an answer to that question which actually leans in his favour. Pursuant to Article 14 of the Law on Offenses against Public Order and Peace, for such an act, a fine of 50 to 200 DEM is incurred, ranging from 185 to 750 kuna in Croatian domestic currency.
“Moral is understood as a generally accepted standard of social behaviour, so an act of misdemeanour is usually a behaviour that significantly deviates from the attitudes of the environment in which it is taking place,” they explained from PU Osijek-Baranja at the request of Glas Slavonije.
So, whether you believe the girl was well within her rights to be sunbathing naked on the private balcony attached to her own private property or not, it seems that one large company is very much on her side. Pipi to the rescue!
As tportal writes on the 10th of May, 2018, Dalmacijavino’s legendary Pipi drink took advantage of this bizarre case as a golden marketing opportunity and went on a quest for the Osijek girl who was sunbathing on the balcony naked herself. Through its Facebook page, they urged people to help them search for the identity of the girl, who may or may not now be wearing clothes, for whom they’re willing to pay the fine to the police.
”The law is the law, but when preparing for summer is in question, it’s clear that it’s easy to let things slip š So, if this girl was given a fine for sunbathing without any clothes on, on her own balcony, Pipi will cover the cost. Share [this message] and help us in our search for this queen,” the popular drinks company wrote on the official Pipi Facebook page.
