ehoch,
I am not sure where I will be in relation to the places listed. I am going for a training course for a week, but have never been to Berlin. It should be an adventure! I will check out the various pools and see what I can find.
I have asked my contacts there to see if they can find anything for me too. We will see.
Thanks!
Diana
This will not be easy - take it from a German. There are plenty of pools -- here is your source for all the pools:
http://www.swimmersguide.com/
but there virtually no Masters teams in Germany. Here is one - they have practice 2x per week very late in the evening
Trainingszeiten:
Di.: 20:30-22:00 Uhr
Do.: 20:30-22:00 Uhr
Ort:
Schwimmhalle im Sportforum Hohenschönhausen
Fritz-Lesch-Str.
13053 Berlin
The other problem is Lap swimming is terrible in Germany -- they usually don't use lane lines to divide, everybody swims Breaststroke, and usually there is a big rope between the shallow and deep end.
Berlin is very big -- what part of town are you in ? Look for a club team in that area - maybe they have a Masters group.
If you are connected with the military, try Andrews army base. They are located in a former cadet barracks, and had a terrific indoor 50 meter pool that is not used very much. I swam in it in 1986 and it was cool, about 76 degrees F. As for location, it is near the Grunewald is all I remember.
go to www.scwedding-berlin.de
This will get you to the masters club in Berlin. Click on schwimmen (swimming) then click on schwimmen again and finally on trainingszeiten (swimming sites). I also think there is a way to translate this site into English but I am not sure how. In any event you can figure out enough info to get you started.
I went to the S C Wedding website. They do seem to have Masters hours on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 7 to 8 pm with no coach listed. The good news is that there is a couple of phone numbers listed for the coaches. They use three different pools in the city.
www.swimmersguide.com/selectfacility.aspx
If I did this right, these are the pools in Berlin. There is one on the list (Europa-Sportpark) that hosted the German Masters Nationals in '06 which I attended. An excellent 50m pool.
there are still no real Master swim teams in Germany as such as we know them in the US. Some clubs have them but they are more recreational swim clubs than competitive. A few clubs (my former team started it) now have groups for "retired swimmers", which probably comes the closest to a masters team. They were established out of former swimmers getting together and training again.
Overall, adults normally go swim by themselves or find a triathlon group to train with. There are enough public pools around Germany (europa sport park is one of them and I can only recommend it, Europeans 2014 are going to be there) that there has not been a real need for real structured master teams.
Whenever I go back to my hometown, I train with the Senior 1 team as there is only a triathlon group that trains once/week.
www.berlin.de/.../
use google translate or click on any of the links underneath the picture and it will show you every public pool and lake in trhe respective district.
If you have trouble reading, let me know where you are staying and I'll find the pools for you.
Hello,
I have to disagree with the above post, as a former USMS swimmer now living and swimming in Berlin, Germany. There are quite a few structured masters teams here in Berlin, and many do focus on competing in meets. Of course there are also many casual clubs (clubs for sports and hobbies in general are more common here, or at least historically were) so it might take some searching to find what you're looking for.
Above posters are correct in saying that lap swimming in Germany generally sucks, although it depends on when and where you swim, and for a short visit public pools would probably suffice. For information on all public pools in Berlin, check out http://www.berlinerbaeder.de/ if you can understand German or get by with an online translator. The Swimmersguide link above also looks quite good.
I have yet to see a masters team that practices in the mornings, unfortunately, and it's not unusual for practices to be quite late, for example 8-10 pm. My current team offers masters practices 5 evenings a week, three of which are specifically aimed at competition/meet swimmers, and all of which follow a training plan. I'm not sure what the policy on guest/visiting swimmers is, but when I first got here and was looking for a new team, I was able to attend a few practices as a trial period before I joined a particular team.
At a recent masters meet in Berlin there were 23 teams/clubs in attendance, and the following 11 had more than 5 swimmers participating:
Berliner TSC
BSC Robben
BSV "Friesen 1895"
BSV Medizin Marzahn
PSV Delphin 1889
SC Humboldt-Uni Berlin
SG Neukölln Berlin
SG Schöneberg, Berlin
SSV Ostring 93
Vorspiel SSL Berlin
Wasserfreunde Spandau 04
