Having lived in Germany for months on end, I unravelled one of the country’s best kept secrets.

It’s the mystery that has confounded tourists and immigrants alike for generation upon generation re. fashion in Germany. Outside of the fashionably unfashionable Berlin, that is.

It’s not the wearing of double denim (that’s denim on both top and bottom) or the fluro strap around the ankle of pants to keep them off the bike chain. It’s not even the tucking of one pant leg into the sock to do the same.

No, it’s worse still: the case of the High-Pants Harry/Helga. You all know what I’m talking about: waistlines up to the armpit, cheek splitting wedgies, that sort of thing.

According to my latest research, the phenomenon can be broken down thus:

1. Germans ride bikes EVERYWHERE;
2. it’s COLD in winter;
3. sitting on a bike seat (frozen, at this point, might I add), necessarily entails the dreaded forward reach to the handlebars;
4. in doing so, the wearer of fashionably low-slung jeans is liable to experience the predictable kidney freeze that comes from exposing a strip of flesh to the (unreasonably chilly) elements.
ERGO…the abnormal prevalence of the High Harry/Helga waistline throughout Germany.

So now you can all stop wondering. Do, please, let me know if anyone has since invented clothes that meet in the middle that don’t simultaneously involve atomic wedgies, that is.