Crazy Swimming

The indoor swimming pool here in Ilmenau (Schwimmhalle am Stollen - it's a very creative name - it's the swimming pool on the street named am Stollen) opened last Saturday. I've been a few times, but it is really a crazy pool. Let me give you an idea of what it's like to swim there.

Picture your normal twenty-five meter pool that is about four lanes wide. There are no lane lines up. There are about thirty people in the pool, most of whom are swimming laps and all doing breaststroke. Why only breaststroke? Because it's basically a free for all. You have to dodge people right and left, and breaststroke is the only way you can possibly swim without causing a major pileup. At the same time as you have thirty people randomly swimming laps, there are the inevitable twelve year old boys jumping off the side into the pool, horsing around, swimming back and forth (not in the same direction as the lap swimmers of course), swimming underneath you and squirting each other with supersoakers. Then there are the teenagers who are just soaking in the pool, making it even harder to find a place on the wall to turn around - especially since they are usually making out so you can't really go in between them. It's really quite adventurous. I've never swum so much breaststroke in my life.

Other than the utter chaos of the pool scene, I really quite enjoy it. It's cheap (8 euro for a ten visit card) and clean and only a twenty minute walk from my place (everything is a twenty minute walk from my place). The website has a section called Fotos where you would think they would just have pictures of the facilities. Instead they have a series of pictures which in America would probably be construed as mild softcore porn. Quite interesting.