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Culture shock: an Italian tries a Bavarian swimming pool

  • February 19, 2016

I adore swimming and given we used to go to Italian swimming pools to relax during a finish of a day, we motionless to keep adult this healthy robe when we altered to Munich, Germany.

This became even some-more critical as we altered my diet from a Mediterranean, offset one (it is true, Italians need a spaghetti plate AT LEAST once a week) to a diet formed on Hamburger-Wurst-Kartoffeln (any kind of potatoes).

So what could have left wrong after such a correct decision?

Here are 5 things that we schooled when we went to a German swimming pool:

1. Changing Rooms

Entering a German swimming pool’s changing room for a initial time done me go as red as a beetroot.

Why? we was totally certain we had done a mistake. we was surrounded by half-naked men, changing their garments openly outward of a changing stalls.

But when we incited around and went to demeanour for a womanlike changing area, blaming myself for this irritating error, we satisfied that a sauce bedrooms were for both group and women! But theory what? All a women were changing INSIDE a stalls, while a group were exhibiting their wealth to a world! 

I mustered adult my bravery and looked for an removed spot, wearing my hypothetical blinkers and creation a mental note to remember to move a genuine ones subsequent time, in sequence to equivocate some upsetting sights.

2. In a Lane

The swimming pool is not a Atlantic Ocean, even if it looks like that to a eyes of Bavarian people. After being invariably upheld by swimmers going during lightning speed, we started to demeanour around to try to know this irritating function where everybody is flitting everybody else.

We can’t confirm either sauce as a charmer would give we a speed advantage or not. Photo: DPA

At first, we usually beheld that no one was wearing a float cap, that is opposite all a simple sterilizing manners of Italian swimming pools. But that is another story. Eventually, after looking down, we detected a secret!

Almost everybody was wearing flippers, that we would never have suspicion about, given in Italy not even a many inveterate swimmer uses them, even during a seaside!

I mean, it is astray to be swimming with flippers!

3. Outside

A discourse between a G(erman) and an I(talian):

G: “Let’s go to an outside swimming pool!”

I: “Great idea! After all it is January!!! Are we crazy?”

G: “Not during all! It’s a best duration of a year to suffer prohibited H2O while it’s snowing all around you!”

Swimmers suffer a outside thermal baths in Bad Abbach, Bavaria. Photo: DPA

Each swimming pool has an destined outside section. German people unequivocally suffer outside swimming pools in a winter. Aren’t they deliberation that even if their bodies are enthralled in prohibited H2O their heads are removing weather-beaten? Forget it! And they don’t even get sick! 

On a contrary, we consider this is a categorical reason they are so audacious and volatile and when vacationing during an Italian lake are a usually ones in a H2O during 8 a.m.

4. Steam Bath

Germans are also large fans of steam baths. You’ll find one during roughly each swimming pool. As usual, these places are open to both group and women. So distant so good.

Scenes in a normal Bavarian sauna might not be this civilized. Photo: DPA

But how would we conflict if, as shortly as we enter, we are welcomed by a garland of totally exposed men?

Not a snippet of a towel! Weird situation? By no means! It’s a German approach to discharge toxins and impurities, though maybe it would be improved if they did that in solitude.

5. Showers

After a swim, a steam bath, and a enlightenment shocks they caused, an Italian lady thinks that during slightest she deserves a private shower. She carefully enters a womanlike ONLY showering section and finally feels giveaway to demeanour in any instruction given there are usually (naked) women.

She decides that there are no dangers and takes off her swimsuit. After a correct showering she goes into a dry partial of a womanlike ONLY showering section to put on her bathrobe, and what does she see? A MAN! Unconcernedly cleaning a womanlike showers!

And now we ask myself: is this a nation of indifferent and regressive people everybody is articulate about?

Maybe a swimming pools exhibit something else…

Elena Cerizza is an Italian vital in Munich. She creatively wrote this essay for InterNations, a expat amicable network.

Article source: http://www.thelocal.de/20160219/culture-shock-an-italian-tries-a-german-swimming-pool

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