Because eating and swimming don’t mix, this post is not about food.

Herr R and I tried out a different community pool the other day. It was exceptional for the following reasons:
• On one side of the building there is a heated outside lap pool and a wave pool inside for big kids. On the other side there are two big thermal pools and a cool plunge pool. Your options are totally covered; the separation of high-energy (lap and wave) and low-energy (thermal) pools is brilliant both in terms of ambient temperature and ambient noise
• It has beautifully tiled and mirrored cathedral ceilings above the large thermal pools
• It has a strict ‘no laughing at the pregnant lady as she slowly waddles towards the lap pool wearing a bikini, a 34-week fetus, goggles and a racing cap’ policy
• There happened to be pregnancy water aerobics classes while we were there, and they were happy to let me join in.
The water aerobics teacher didn’t speak English, but mimed the exercises very well. We started with jogging and fist pumps in the air and high knees and frog jumps and tiptoe-like-a-ballerina and all sorts of other moves that felt absolutely wonderfully freeing. Then we went to the cold plunge pool, then back in the thermal pool for what was the best 10 minutes of my week:
With one floaty behind my knees, and one behind my neck, I could float without any effort whatsoever. After a few minutes to get nice and relaxed and to notice the cool ceilings, the music came on: beautiful classical music, played underwater. So there I was, drifting and blissed out in the water, watching the reflection in the ceiling mirrors of my hugely floating belly and the funny shadows and bumps in it that came with Smidgen playing one-babe-mosh-pit roughly in time with the music. Apparently she thinks that classical music ROCKS!

In case you’re interested, the pool also offers a gazillion different saunas and something that I cannot resist calling the Friday Night Special: between the hours of 8 and 11pm on, you guessed it, Friday evening, the lights are turned down, the music comes on, and the candles are lit for a romantic evening of bathing at the public pool. Someday, after many more weeks and months of living in Germany, this will seem normal to me. In the meantime, I’m fine with getting all super relaxed during pregnancy class but getting that relaxed on a Friday night with lots of other people at the public pool seems freaking weird. Turns out I’m a prude. A pruny prude.