KOPFTUCH FÜR DEN HERRN

Towel – Just about the most massively useful thing any interstellar Hitchhiker can carry.*

Always on may, 25th, hitchhiker’s, fans and enthusiasts of Douglas Adams are celebrating the Towel Day by carrying a towel with them. A tribute to the author of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’.
With he countdown running, it’s time to get a wonderful towel as a homage to D. Adams. The DON’T PANIC Towel has great practical value. It keeps warm and you can dry yourself off with it. More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. It features in big letters the good advice for all people in the universe: DON’T PANIC.

Shopping is a pleasure at the DON’T PANIC Towel Shop

Ein Handtuch ist so ungefähr das Nützlichste, was der interstellare Anhalter besitzen kann.*

Kurz nach seinem Tod dem 11. Mai 2001, wurde zu Ehren von D. Adams ein Gedenktag ins Leben gerufen: der Towel Day am 25. Mai. An diesem Tag sind jedes Jahr seine Fans aufgerufen ein Handtuch sichtbar zu tragen. Höchste Zeit um sich in der Vorbereitung zum Handtuchtag mit einem besonderem Exemplar auszustatten. Das DON’T PANIC Towel ist zu Ehren für Douglas Adams und seinen einzigartigen Roman ‘Per Anhalter durch die Galaxis’ entworfen.

Trage es in Ehren.

* Douglas Adams, Per Anhalter durch die Galaxis, Chapter 3

Even the corona pandemic is still not over. It is time to relax, roll out your towel and pop a fish in your ear. Today, is Towel Day.

As a tribute to Douglas Adams on may 25th, carry a towel with you. The Towel Day, a wonderful tribute to Adams and a sign in public to identify other Hitchhiker :)

Of course, a good towel belongs to the standard equipment of my luggage. In addition to the practical value of warmth and shade, it always offers in large letters a wise advice for life: DON’T PANIC. On the occasion of Towel Day 2021 I took as usual a photo, somewhere on planet Earth. This time, the pandemic version, I stay at home, in Berlin, Germany with my suitcase ready to travel again.

Shopping is a pleasure at the DON’T PANIC Towel Shop

The original quotation that explained the importance of towels is found in Chapter 3 of Adams’ work The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

“A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost.” What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)” 

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy