The Limmat

I've been absolutely fascinated by what I've heard about river swimming here in Switzerland.  One of the first things I saw about Switzerland was a BBC spot about swimming in the Aare River in Bern.  Essentially, the city has sectioned off a segment of the river, and it's a popular summer tradition to jump into the very swift river at the top of the segment, float or swim to the bottom, and then crawl out of the river, walk back to the top, to do it all over again.  I actually remember doing something similar in an Ohio river once: maybe my mother remembers where.  And I understand that people do the same in Zürich's Limmat River, too.

I know one little girl who would enjoy this very much: she adores the lazy river in water parks, but, too often, they look like this, or worse:

How much fun it would be to enjoy the fast floating without the bumping bodies.

My little bus buddie

Today was much too cold to think about swimming, but I thought maybe Joey and I could take a walk to the river, to judge how safe and child friendly the river swimming would be.

Joey, looking longlingly at the larger swim area: this one
might have been a quarter-mile long from end to end, and
had a fun looking rest area, with lounge chairs and tiki
torches.

The smaller swimming area: this one seemed
less child friendly

It turns out that the city has diverted the Limmat so that part of it flows through private swimming areas.  These are operated by the same organization that runs all of the city pools, and so they include the same facilities (including snack stands, lending libraries, changing areas, and a life guard) that the municipal pools and beaches offer.  The water in the swimming area seems a little shallower and slower than the Limmat, but it's still quite fast. And it's surprisingly warm, no colder than our local swimming pool. Despite the cold weather and the early hour, there were a small handful of people there to demonstrate just how fast you move.  They appeared to be exercising, but it seems to be cheating, a little, to swim along with a current.

My suspicions that this is kind of novel, even for Europe, were confirmed when a German businessman stopped and asked me what on earth we were looking at.  I explained, and he looked surprised.  Both the swimming areas I saw were about a half mile from the Hauptbahnhof and the heart of Zürich. And they're right on the bus line that leaves just outside our apartment complex.  It's totally possible, although I think I might want to get Ella a life jacket or a floaty, first, mermaid though she is.

From an underwater photography
session that I won in a drawing last year.

I spent the afternoon playing with some very silly boys, sneaking outside whenever there was a pause in the rain.

When Ella came home at lunch, she announced that she would need new clothing for tomorrow's concert performance at her school.  And I had an instant flashback to all those years, from fourth grade on, that my mom and dad had to make sure we always had black pants and a white blouse in our wardrobe.  Ella's music teacher is a little more artsy: she requested that the children wear all black.  "And no shoes! In school!" Ella reported gleefully.

We made a plan to go shopping right after dinner, but Ella came home with a page-long essay to write, in German, in addition to all of her other daily chores (flash cards and daily reading).  That took much longer that we would have liked: she put the final period on it at 7:00.  But she'd been so excited about a little mommy-daughter shopping trip that I took her anyway, and we bought the only black clothing that we could find at the mall (squeezing in time for a cone of gelato, to make it a real occasion). "Oh, mom! This feels just heavenly! Oh, I feel very grown-up." She told me when she tried it on.  She thinks she looks really good.  Dennis raised his eyebrow when he saw the rhinestones, and I tried to keep a straight face. Darn it, she's growing up.