Above Water: Welcome to the Water City

“The Berlin Movement: This railway never goes on strike.” Blue banners of the Berlin pool companies hang under the huge concrete base that separates the entrance to the swimming pool in Europa Park from the S-Bahn ditch on Landsberger Allee. With funny sayings like this – especially when it’s actually a strike day at the S-Bahn.

I arrived by tram and climbed many stairs. It looks like a DJ set consisting of a record player and mix desk Aerial view of Europa Park with the circular velodrome sunk into it and the underground rectangle of the swimming pool with diving and competition hall, where Franziska van Almsick won five gold medals at the European Championships in 2002. Planned for the 2000 Olympic bid after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the ensemble was built between 1995 and 1999. Only a few architects had attempted the thankless task of designing representative sports buildings for Berlin; two designs without facades, which hide their large building masses in the ground, won.

Above water

Photo: private

Anne Hahn is the author of novels and non-fiction books and swims the waters of the world for “nd”.

On Fridays the bathroom opens at eleven and only a few cupboards are occupied. In the shower I meet women who are already done for the day. It’s strangely quiet in the hall, even though people are swimming on all ten 50-meter lanes. A wooden ceiling made of narrow slats spans the dimly lit hall, and no lighting is used – stupid when the swimming goggles are also darkened. I carefully climb down the ladder into the dark water.

The first two lanes are reserved for swimmers with dry hair, I dive to lane two to three, which offers a double lane for moderate swimmers – with the end of the line pulled up on each side. Twenty of us can easily swim in circles and overtake each other if necessary. Training starts sharply from lane four onwards. This is about sports. It’s infectious, and soon I’ll be plowing towards the blistering plastic planks at the shallow end of the pool. Stop, turn, back.

After half an hour, I’m gasping for air at the edge of the Nuller-Bahn pool, my gaze wanders over a lounging couple of lifeguards, to the oppressive gray behind the window front and the S-Bahn route without trains, until it lands on a beach chair. In the middle of the long side of the swimming pool there is a thick, comfortable sea beach chair! I soon discover another three in the adjacent children’s area. A child plays with his grandparents in the non-swimmer pool, and pensioners cavort in the therapy pool.

I lie down in the orphaned paddling pool and drift off into the novel »The peculiar preference for the sea« by Gregor Hens, which I recently read. It’s about a tropical city by the sea and a family history that spans several generations. I really liked this city and its sea. The taste of salt in the air, the calls of the seabirds over the butterfly fish, bristletooths and iridescent bass. The novel begins with the sentence: “A city without water is dreamless, it has nothing to hide, there is nothing to discover.”

After the initial shock, I decided: All of this applies to Berlin in the opposite sense! Although it is (unfortunately) not by the sea, it is by the water. All of its rivers, canals, bays, harbors, beaches and lakes make up Berlin. Not even counting the hidden water, its baths and halls, I think relaxed, waving to a lifeguard and pointing to the bubblers behind me. He nods and goes into the control center and presses a few buttons. I form a heart with my hands and sink into the stream of water.

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