Over water: Excursion to the Bitterfeld B type

»Is it going to be good soon? This is a sauna and a story time!” Silence. In the tiny room, which was just filled with the chatter of a couple, all that can be heard is the gasping of an older gentleman. Three of them squat on the middle bench like plucked roosters. I slide to the bottom step, my heartbeat calms down. The infusion was violent. We’ll smell like pine trees for days.

Above water

Photo: private

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

The train is on strike this Friday at the end of January, but I’m still making my way to Köpenick. I can easily get to Adlershof with the airport S-Bahn, which runs every 20 minutes from Friedrichstrasse, and take the tram through the ever-long Dörpfeldstrasse to Oberspreestrasse. In the drizzle, I walk over the Long Bridge to the old town of Köpenick, taking a detour to the pier at Luisenhain. The Dahme flows into the Spree here and is as wide as a lake. Seagulls perch on the jetty railing, ducks sit under the no-feeding sign and a cormorant fights with an eel in the middle of the water. Holds it in its beak, hits its long body on the surface of the water, dives under, flies up, contorts itself.

Before the battle is over, I keep running until the streets become wider and the houses taller. My goal is right in the middle Allende districta new development area by 1971 and 1973 (Allende I) and 1981 to 1983 (Allende II) was built between the old town, allotment gardens, forest and Müggelsee. Past pallets and plastic bags, I see the wave-shaped roof of the swimming pool behind a shopping center. The Allendeviertel swimming pool is a typical GDR public swimming pool of the Bitterfeld type. Typ B differs from type A, which does not occur in Berlin, and types C and D, which were built later, more massively and more spacious – for example the public swimming pool in Thälmannpark.

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I walk past the huge window side around the bathroom and enter the sparkling clean entrance area with a mottled gray floor, white palm pots, wooden benches on radiators and the bathing rules drawn on the white wall. A staircase, ticket office, turnstile, lockers. Ten euros deposit for the sauna chip and I’m in the long hallway, shoes under the bench by the hooded hairdryers, cramped changing rooms, the showers too – we squeeze past each other, smiling, around partitions and through a final door. In the light-filled hall, there is a double lane in the 25-meter pool for sport swimmers, and there is also a three-lane-wide splash pad. A lifebuoy hangs on each of the short sides of the wall.

I’m irritated when I’m swimming breaststroke, I’m missing the current. But most of all I miss the seabed. At least a sea cucumber could be lying around here, or a small moray eel could be peeking out of the wall light box. At least the sun is shining, I fantasize as I float on my back in the non-swimmers’ pool after my thousand meters with my eyes closed. A chatting couple on the heated benches at the edge of the pool drives me away to the hidden sauna, whose white and yellow surfaces look cheerful like daycare equipment. The rain is pattering behind the window and there is a strong smell of forest.