What is Bonn's fascination with the boat shoe? This is something that has been annoying me from day one here. Well, actually, I didn't notice it right at the start. It was a gradual process.
The first time I saw my uni-student neighbours wearing boat shoes, I thought: "Ooh, how very ironic - nice touch". Then, our Hausmeister showed up at my door in a pair. Maybe he was a sailor, I thought. THEN I noticed otherwise stylish young women wearing them. I had never seen this anywhere in the industrialised world.
Then I realised that my young neighbours weren't wearing boat shoes to be ironic. They had a number of different pairs of boat shoes - blue, tan, natural, green suede. But then, this took the cake: I caught a down-and-out chef out the back of my local Chinese restaurant wearing a scuffed old pair, smoking a cigarette while sitting on a beer crate.
My conclusion, after two months in Bonn: boat shoes have clearly permeated all levels of society here.
Why is this such a problem for me, you ask? Well, aside from the fact that I used to get beaten up at the age of 14 (ie. way back in the 90s) for wearing boat shoes because they were uncool even then, my concern with boat shoes is that it's a classic case of people trying to be what they are not. Undoubtedly, many people here like to row. But how many of them are really sailors? Not many, I would wager, considering that sailing on the Rhine really isn't that popular, and there's no body of water here for about 70 kilometers.
There are also other concerns, such as:
- wearing them without shoes makes your feet smell,
- wearing them with socks looks ridiculous,
- when they get wet they stay wet (and the leather stains your feet and socks brown),
- they are so mainstream that it is clear you are making no effort,
- they offer no support to your foot arch,
- they are overpriced,
- they are prone to falling apart, and
- they're not actually non-slip (even though that's their only selling point).
Not that I've ever worn them, of course.
