That is the crossing of Lake Zürich, which happened last week. Most frequently one would überquer a street--- or actually quer a street über, as it is a separable verb.
A friend from Germany was recently visiting me and we were talking about if I liked Zürich and why and a big part of my (somewhat flimsy) answer was the city's relationship with the water. With two rivers and a lake, the summer in Zürich is so chill. Go to a bar next to the Limmat, jump of the neighboring bridge and float down to the next one with your waterproof bag that houses your towel and wallet. So relaxed for a seemingly uptight city. Maybe it is because European cities were usually built next to rivers and lakes and that is not my experience from back home. Anyways, this event further exemplifies this notion.
Every summer (as long as the center lake gets warm enough {70F/21C?}, the city's sport department with several partners organizes a special day when anyone who feels physically capable can pay 20 francs and swim 1.5 kilometers across Lake Zürich from one public swimming area to another. The course is set up with buoys and balloon towers to mark the way and kayaks and motorboats to keep other boats from crossing and to save anyone who gets tired.
I first heard about it last year, but it got cancelled because of the weather, despite the two make up days. This year I saw the advertisements in the tram, but didn't know my schedule and assumed it was something for which you needed to sign-up in advance and train (WRONG!). I was planning on doing it next year, with some proper training.
When I got to the office Wednesday morning, I received a group text to my frisbee team asking if/when they were meeting to do the swim. I had a pretty empty afternoon and thought Why Not? (I am trying to say yes to more things these days). Plus, who knows what the weather will be like next summer - maybe it will get canceled again. I checked with my boss to make sure everything for our event the next day was set and then headed home to grab my suit and goggles at lunchtime.
The event website was very clear:
On the bus ride there I was thinking about how I had not swum a lap since last September when I was rehabbing my knee (and that was only twice before I got a gym membership and switched to working out on an elliptical) and have not really been doing any sort of endurance workouts recently. I was relying on my experience swimming the 500 yard freestyle event for the high school swim team (almost 10 years ago!) to carry me through. I mean it is over a mile! But also shorter than you would typically swim in a swim practice (so totally doable)! But there is no resting or hanging on the wall! Back and forth in my mind the whole way there.
I met my teammates (and a former teammate) at three, we got our start numbers, sun screened and watched the group before us do the warm-up. I thought warm-up meant there would be some part of the lake where you could swim a bit, but it was basically an aerobics class with music and an instructor and two backup dancers. So just imagine hundreds of people in bathing suits and caps stepping and dancing almost in unison. People who were just at the swimming area to escape the heat also joined in --- it was about 95F (quite warm for a country with very little air conditioning). When it was our turn, I didn't even fall over and mostly kept the rhythm.
We started in heats of a few hundred swimmers (I don't know about our group, but the initial group was 800 people). The beginning was intimidating. The water was so cold and we all went in the water assuming everyone would be faster than us, so I was basically stuck behind layers of people swimming breaststroke without putting their heads in the water and chatting the whole time. I tried to squeeze between people to pass them so I could swim crawl (1500 meters of breaststroke - no way I would make that!) and was kicked in the ribs a few times. I made my way over to the fast lane, with no intention of being fast, but rather wanting to utilize the space that the fast folks left behind them. Life was much better over there!
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| So scenic! |
Every summer (as long as the center lake gets warm enough {70F/21C?}, the city's sport department with several partners organizes a special day when anyone who feels physically capable can pay 20 francs and swim 1.5 kilometers across Lake Zürich from one public swimming area to another. The course is set up with buoys and balloon towers to mark the way and kayaks and motorboats to keep other boats from crossing and to save anyone who gets tired.
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| The route: Mythenquai to Tiefenbrunnen. |
When I got to the office Wednesday morning, I received a group text to my frisbee team asking if/when they were meeting to do the swim. I had a pretty empty afternoon and thought Why Not? (I am trying to say yes to more things these days). Plus, who knows what the weather will be like next summer - maybe it will get canceled again. I checked with my boss to make sure everything for our event the next day was set and then headed home to grab my suit and goggles at lunchtime.
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| It was even the nicer kind of swim cap (silicone) - that alone is worth half of the entrance fee. |
- This is not a competition!
- There is no timing!
- There is no registering! (The first ten thousand people who show up and pay are given a swim cap with a number which dictates your start time.... show up between two and six in the afternoon)
- Decide for yourself, if you are in the right health state for this. Talk to your doctor if you aren't sure if you can handle it.
- Included: swim cap, warm-up, gift, bag transport across the lake and risotto.
- Verboten: Cameras and flotation devices
On the bus ride there I was thinking about how I had not swum a lap since last September when I was rehabbing my knee (and that was only twice before I got a gym membership and switched to working out on an elliptical) and have not really been doing any sort of endurance workouts recently. I was relying on my experience swimming the 500 yard freestyle event for the high school swim team (almost 10 years ago!) to carry me through. I mean it is over a mile! But also shorter than you would typically swim in a swim practice (so totally doable)! But there is no resting or hanging on the wall! Back and forth in my mind the whole way there.
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| The crew. Changing the club charter to a swim club (or exploring opportunities in Water Ultimate... Underwater Rugby is already a thing, you guys) |
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| The warm up from 2009 (Source: 20 Minutes {the free morning newspaper}) |
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| View from the shore last year. "Fast swimmers" to the left of the balloons, "swimmers" to the right. (Source: postmedien.ch) |
By the time I made it to Buoy #1 the temperature was great and I felt accomplished for at least getting started and kept trying to do the math about how far I had left to go (they never said how many buoys there were). Luckily at 350m, 650m, and a few other intervals they posted the actual distances so I could gauge my progress. With each one I felt more confident that I could finish. I couldn't quite swim in a straight line, but it wasn't nearly as drastic as the time in middle school when I somehow swam under the lane lines (during backstroke?) and either finished or did my flip-turn in the (luckily empty) lane next to me. Leisurely freestyle with occasional directional reorientation and navigation around people, with no fatigue, in the sun- it was so nice and enjoyable.
Even if your Swiss German is not tiptop, the video on this site will give you a good idea of the experience/scale.
I finished and went to the tent where volunteers were handing out drinks. I assumed that it was something like Gatorade, although at running races in Germany, I have seen them hand out beer and alcohol free beer. The cup was warm, but it was 90+F so I chalked it up to a lack of refrigeration and took a sip. BROTH! Soup. Not intuitively refreshing at all, but some how enjoyable enough that I went back for seconds while I was waiting for my teammates to finish.
We collected our gift water bottles, free risotto (it didn't have much taste, but to have dinner included at a sporting event that only cost 20 bucks was a nice touch) and carry-on sized sunscreen, then headed to a slightly less crowded and more shady area nearby for some swimming and a bit of a picnic.
VERDICT: This was sooooo cool, despite growing up as a swimmer, I had never done an open water swim before. I think I would like to try to do more of it or just more swimming in general. I was on the faster side for this very causal event, but not for a competition - it would be nice to train a bit more seriously or at least with a goal in mind.
Also, talk about Swiss efficiency! Almost 9,000 people showed up at a the equivalent of a public pool (albeit with a very big lawn) over the course of 4 hours and made it across the lake with no preregistration. You would wait in a fairly short line (there were some surges when the nearby trams and buses arrived, but I don't think anyone waited more than 7 minutes) hand someone 20 francs in return for a cap that had a tag for your bag so you could pick it up on the other side, an instruction sheet and a meal coupon inside.
This was on a mid-week afternoon-- that is a lot of folks skipping out on work (most of the people I was there with were teachers or PhD students, but that is still a pretty impressive crowd).
When I got home and checked my work email, I found out that more people had signed up for our workshop on Thursday and by the way we need you to moderate a workshop group. This caught me off guard, but my group ended up having a great discussion about sanitation supply chains :)
Enjoying a European summer so far! I'm off to Germany for a fun 4vs4 ultimate tournament next weekend, then hopefully a bit of enjoying/exploring Switzerland before a tentative Southeast Asia work trip in August.
When I got home and checked my work email, I found out that more people had signed up for our workshop on Thursday and by the way we need you to moderate a workshop group. This caught me off guard, but my group ended up having a great discussion about sanitation supply chains :)
Enjoying a European summer so far! I'm off to Germany for a fun 4vs4 ultimate tournament next weekend, then hopefully a bit of enjoying/exploring Switzerland before a tentative Southeast Asia work trip in August.
