Smells Like Trouble

A group of teenage girls staying at a youth hostel in the northern German coastal town of Büsum got to meet some real fire-fighting heroes on Friday morning. Not that the girls were doing a report on rescue workers, or trying to save a cat that climbed up a tall tree and was mewing like a spoiled child.

One hardly expects any sense of purpose or consequence from young people at that awfully weird part of their lives when hormones rage through their bodies and the world seems like one big spring break party.

Yet one can sympathize with the girls who decided one morning that all they really wanted was to make the northern German winter smell a little less like a wet dog. They wanted to believe that the right deodorant can paint your room in bright colors and make you feel better than you've ever felt before -- the way it does in television commercials.

So they went to the ladies' room and immersed themselves in the flowery scent of spring meadows. They sprayed. And sprayed. And sprayed.

Holy smoke

What they didn't realize is that gorgeous whiffs of white lilies and chrysanthemums did not only titillate their bodies -- they rose above their heads and collected below the ceiling in a halo of freshness and otherworldly light.

With so much explosive energy and real chemistry in the ladies' room, however, the fire alarm got triggered, alerting the local fire brigade that something funky was going on at the youth hostel.

Three fire trucks and a patrol car raced to the scene only to find no fire but a ladies' room that never smelled so sweet.

Who's to blame?

Deodorant commercials in Germany do not differ much from their counterparts in other parts of the world where deodorants are portrayed as powerful tools of self-expression. Their message ranges from "It's so yummi, I could almost eat it for breakfast" to "I believe I can fly even though I don't do drugs."

Whether the girls at the youth hostel thought they were sharing mango lassis rather than antimicrobial cocktails with a touch of aluminum cholorhydrate, or whether they were hoping to become olfactory superheroes to the soundtrack of Celine Dion, the fact of the matter is: They must have had a blast when the firefighting hunks arrived to save them.

"The young ladies will hopefully use not so much scent in the future," said police spokesperson Volker Buttgereit.