Even Bertolt Brecht, a comrade at heart and a poet by trade, knew the joys of the open-air swimming pool. “About swimming in lakes and rivers” is the title of one of his most beautiful poems, a masterpiece full of joie de vivre and lust for the sun. “In the pale summer,” it says, “when the winds whistle above / Only in the leaves of the tall trees / One must lie in rivers or ponds / Like the plants where pikes live.”
A fine piece of advice from literature, which one is happy to follow, especially in this summer marked by heat waves. Best of all where Brecht refreshed himself by swimming in the 1940s: on Lake Zurich and on the Limmat – the poet had lived in and around Zurich for a long time at the time.
When it comes to swimming fun, the offer is unique: Zurich advertises that it is the city with the highest “swimming density” in an international comparison. There’s something to it: there are five river pools on the Limmat alone and six beach pools on Lake Zurich, as well as various outdoor and indoor pools and miles of “wild” bathing spots.
In the local dialect, the original name “Badi”, which sounds almost funny to German ears, has emerged as a collective term for all these bathing opportunities in nature and in swimming pools. North of Lake Constance, when it comes to swimming in the open air, it is well known that the bathing establishment is used. That sounds like an institution, a compulsory exercise, even like coercion.
On the other hand, the Swiss Badi awakens associations with light-footedness, fun, joie de vivre! And it is even affordable, which is anything but a matter of course in comparatively expensive Switzerland.
Some swimming pools do not charge admission at all, and at numerous bathing spots – Lake Zurich has 90 kilometers of shore, plus the river – you can just jump into the water. Elsewhere you typically pay around ten euros for access to a well-kept pool (see below) and get many hours of cooling and everyday happiness in return.
Accordingly, the city feels like a single paddling pool in the warm season. This lively holiday feeling can even set in in the inner city of Zurich: Barely more than a stone’s throw away from the National Bank, Paradeplatz, Kunsthaus and other monuments of high finance and culture are the river pools in the Limmat.
Those who prefer beach and lake bathing will find what they are looking for further south on Lake Zurich. The body of water is around 40 kilometers long and up to four kilometers wide, and on the map it has the shape of a banana.
The north shore towards Küsnacht, where Brecht’s contemporary Thomas Mann once set up his exile residence, is traditionally known as the “Gold Coast” – on the one hand because of the sparkling windows and roofs in the golden evening sunshine, on the other hand because of the wealth of the residents, which is reflected in the many luxurious domiciles shows. The southern shore, on the other hand, is called the “Schnupfen Coast” or “Pfnüsel Coast”. It’s hardly less wealthy now, but less sun-kissed and correspondingly cooler.
However, river bathing of the civilized kind did not begin on the Zurich Limmat, but in the Seine in Paris as early as the 18th century – i.e. during the pre-revolutionary times of the Ancien Régime. Other European cities soon took up the refreshing idea and created a trend across Europe, for example in the German cultural area with the first bathing establishments or boats in Vienna, Hamburg, Frankfurt am Main and Mannheim.
In Switzerland, river bathing began in the mid-19th century. At that time, most Swiss were anything but rich, and very few had a bathroom at home. Right from the start, this caused lively demand from pool service providers in public spaces. For the sake of cleanliness and hygiene, for the purpose of physical exercise – and certainly also for seeing and being seen, for a little shag or a bit of flirting.
Today, Switzerland is one of the richest countries in the world, but the badis, originally poor people’s institutions, are still an essential part of Swiss savoir-vivre. If a small town or village in the Swiss Confederation has a church and town hall, it usually also has a pool or two. Badi is a Swiss cultural asset.
The uninitiated might think that the water in Lake Zurich and the Limmat, which rises in the high alpine mountains, is ice-cold or at least bitterly fresh – which the Limmat, with its sometimes glistening bright green water, seems to confirm at first glance. But that is by no means the case. At the Frauen-Badi, opposite the twin towers of the Grossmünster, the water temperature is currently around 24 degrees and the air is a good 30 degrees.
The strong current of the Limmat takes some getting used to, at least for inexperienced swimmers. Advantage: You can let yourself drift, with little effort you can really make your way through the metropolis.
Some people in Zurich even swim to work (or, depending on the direction, home from their shift), easily recognizable from the bank as they have a waterproof, rope-tied swimming bag in tow in which to stow their day clothes and other belongings are. Disadvantage: If you want to return to the starting point later, you have to take the tram, bus or train. Swimming against the current is almost impossible.
But there are also group-specific features when it comes to outdoor bathing, each pool has a special meaning and attracts a specific target group. At the Unterer Letten, for example, one of the most well-known river pools, you will meet many party people between 20 and early 30, the “Berliners of Zurich”.
The neighboring Badi Oberer Letten, on the other hand, has a kind of wooden plank terrace with user-friendly but worn metal railings and has “a good atmosphere, you can see all ages there,” says a regular guest. As you can hear on site, other Zurich residents find it a bit style-free, which may also be due to the fact that there is no entrance fee. It is a kind of low-cost outdoor pool, where everyone can swim, laze around and have fun in the pool according to their own taste.
In the famous women’s pool on Stadthausquai (admission to be paid here) things are more civilized. In the stylish wooden pavilion, women are among themselves during the day, “here there are both the mums from Zürichberg”, as one visitor says, “but also office friends who want to be a bit hip”. Men are allowed to drink at the bar in the evening. The no less well-known seaside resort of Enge on the Mythenquai lake shore tends to attract younger people. There is “a bit of a towing atmosphere”.
Of course, the swimming pools are not primarily about flirting and having fun of the horizontal kind – but on the other hand it is by no means just about bathing, paddling or swimming aerobics. In any case, the bath attendant at Mythenquai wears “Baywatch” red Knalleng shorts there. An accident? The Badi am Utoquai, on the other hand, functions, quite obviously, at the same time as a meeting place for swimming gays, at least in the men’s corner there.
There are a few proverbial faux pas that should be avoided in Zurich’s swimming pools. Firstly, naturism is not a good idea; However, women are not allowed to wear a top. Secondly, playing loud music is frowned upon. Thirdly, many Swiss people are reserved and polite. The stranger who marches into the pool in an extroverted manner, addresses the locals directly and tries to make small talk, is quickly considered a strange German.
Finally, in the lake one should not swim past the boundary markers, which are there for a good reason, as this can be dangerous. Who wants to crash into a motor boat?
And what would a pool be without food and drink? It is not advisable to be stingy in the wrong place, especially not to bring food and drink from home. Because every Badi has its pub, its booth with catering, and there at the kiosk you can and should make sales, especially after the years of the Corona doldrums.
Classics on the menu are the ham and cheese toast, which is popular in Switzerland, and Züri Frites, i.e. French fries with mayonnaise and ketchup. If you like it hearty and more sophisticated, you can organize a fish “Chnuschperli” with tartar sauce (fried perch fillet, i.e. river perch).
Most of them also drink the Swiss national drink Rivella, a herbal lemonade with milk serum. Also popular are Aperol Spritz, rosé wine and frosé, which is rosé with crushed ice and sweet fruit puree. If you want to save money, you could simply climb into the lake and start drinking: the water is of drinking water quality practically everywhere.
If you want to spend the whole day by the water, you definitely need a suitable book in your pool bag. In addition to Brecht’s water poetry, Thomas Mann’s multi-layered Goethe novel “Lotte in Weimar”, which the Nobel Prize winner wrote in part in his villa in Küsnacht on the Gold Coast, is a good choice.
You can’t go wrong with Goethe himself either. As early as 1775, the twenty-something felt inspired by Lake Zurich to write his famous poem “Auf dem See” – the one about “nature so kind and good that holds me by my bosom!” “Swimmed naked, cheered until twelve,” the young Goethe once trilled on or in Lake Zurich. Let’s just rejoice and rejoice with them.
Arrival: Zurich can be easily reached from Germany by car, bus, train and plane. A bus ride from Munich, for example, costs from 18 euros with the provider Flixbus (one way, just under five hours). Lufthansa, Swiss and Easyjet fly non-stop from various German airports. You can get to Zurich by ICE or Eurocity from Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich (bahn.de), and Zurich is also connected to Hamburg and Berlin by night train (nightjet.com).
Zürich Card: The Zürich Card (zuerich.com/de/zuerichcard) is practical and inexpensive. The 72-hour ticket costs adults 53 francs (53 euros), a 24-hour card 27 francs (27 euros). Bookable online in advance.
Badi tips: There are a total of around 600 pools on lakes and rivers in Switzerland. In Zurich, the Frauenbad from 1888 (Stadthausquai, entry for adults eight francs) is just as much a classic of bathing culture as the Seebad Enge (Mythenquai, eight francs plus two francs for the lock on the locker). On the opposite bank of Lake Zurich, you have been able to enjoy water fun in the Utoquai pavilion lake resort since 1890 (entrance fee: eight francs). At the Oberen Letten in Zurich you can swim for free in the Limmat – but beware, the current is quite strong there. The website stadt-zuerich.ch (search for outdoor pools) is helpful. You can swim almost everywhere around Lake Zurich, for example in Rapperswil and Thalwil. This year’s pool season lasts until September; the daily opening hours vary from place to place and pool to pool.
Accommodation: The dignified Zurich city hotel “Storchen” with 64 rooms and suites and its own jetty on the Limmat has been welcoming guests for more than 660 years, several swimming pools are nearby, double rooms from 470 euros including breakfast (storchen.ch). The modern “Alex Lake Zurich” (44 Studios) is located in Thalwil on the southern shore of Lake Zurich, with a jetty in front of the house and a rowing club next door, double rooms from 400 euros including breakfast (alexlakezurich.com). A colorful design hotel alternative in the city is the “25hours Zurich West”, double rooms from 172 euros (25hours-hotels.com). The Zurich youth hostel is inexpensive by Swiss standards and offers shared rooms (from 51 euros per bed) as well as double rooms (from 152 euros) (youthhostel.ch/de/hostels/zurich).
Further information: Zurich Tourism, zuerich.com; Switzerland Tourism, myswitzerland.com
Participation in the trip was supported by “Hotel Storchen” and “Hotel Alex Lake Zurich”. You can find our standards of transparency and journalistic independence at axelspringer.com/de/Werte/downloads.
Can you only swim in Berlin under police protection? After several violent incidents, the chief of police announces a tougher line. After the riot in the Columbiabad in Neukölln, the police strengthened protection with a mobile guard in front of the pool.
Source: WELT/ Antje Diedrichs
