Hello friends.
So, a recent experience with the pools of Paris reminded me of the amusement of swimming in a different country. As you may know, I grew up basically like a fish. I started learning to swim before I was one and swam on a summer team from the age of 8 until 18. There are rules to the pool, a swimming etiquette that you learn from a young age. You must circle swim (swim on the right side of the lane always so there is a flow like traffic), you must allow people to pass if they are faster than you, and you must move out of the way for people coming into the wall. It's a lot like driving. I had previously experienced the difference in swimming when I was a student in Lyon. I was in a swim class and even participated in a swim meet for the university. While I was nowhere near the fastest at the swim meet, it became obvious to me that there were a lot fewer people who knew what it meant to swim in a competitive setting. All that aside, the kicker is that French pools do seem to have a LOT of rules. Rules that you would have never expected if you are used to swimming laps in California (and I would assume other states). So why not write a guide for the American swimmer?
1. When you enter any establishment in Paris and want to get a longer term pass for doing something, you must provide a passport photo and bring it along with you. In order to get a 3 month pass at my Parisian pool, I was asked to provide a photo and refused the sale of said pass until I could return with a photo. Of course there was nowhere to take the photo (normally France has a plentitude of photo booths for this exact purpose). So I paid 2 euros and bought a one-time ticket.
2. Then you must enter the pool by means of the locker room. However, if you have outside shoes on, you will be shooed vigorously by the locker room attendant to go back outside and take your shoes off. I had no pool shoes so there I went stepping on the tile ground, probably ridden with athlete's foot.
3. You must now change in the locker rooms. There's no point in trying to come in your swimsuit and just take your outerwear off, everyone else comes in work clothes, dress clothes, anything that is not workout or sweat attire. You wouldn't want people to actually know you are going swimming.
4. You must go into a changing stall and proceed to hang all your belongings on a plastic contraption while not letting anything fall on the athlete foot floor. This is particularly tricky.
5. You must give all your belongings (your purse included) to the locker room attendant and they will give you a plastic bracelet with a number, presumably to be worn around your wrist or ankle while swimming, although it doesn't fit on either.
6. You then must walk through wetted locker room floors to the showers. Still wishing you had brought flip flops.
7. You are required to "take a shower" before you can get to the pool. You must rinse off and then walk through a pool of stagnant water to "clean off your feet" before you get into the pool deck. All swimmers must wear a swim cap and men must wear a Speedo or jammers, no trunks for you! (another random hygiene rule).
8. You've made it! Only to find there are only 4 lanes in a neighborhood of 40, 000. One is reserved for lessons. One has children playing around in it. In another, breaststroke is inexplicably prohibited. There is one lane left and you leap at the chance! Throw your towel down and get in before a ton of other people join.
9. There are already some swimmers in there who are not going at any sort of fast pace so you spend the first 20 minutes figuring out how to time your laps so as to never have to pass them. They don't seem to understand that when someone is touching your foot, it's time to stop and let them by. They also don't seem to know how to do a flip turn.
10. You stop and take a break and see an egregious situation take place. A man in the lane next to you is blocking the wall with his friends. They are laughing, really just shooting the breeze. Another swimmer approaches the wall and attempts to reach it. The old man puts his hand up, silently, and gestures to the man to turn around. The young man just stops and turns around and starts going the other way.
11. You struggle to swim faster than a crawl the rest of the hour you are there, as you are still navigating your lane with people of all ability levels. Fuming the whole time about the older man's inability to understand the rules of the pool and wishing you had remembered how stressful it was to swim in France.
12. You hop out still feeling very proud of yourself at having completed a workout and head to the showers. Back through the stagnant pool, you rinse off and clean your hair while you're at it. An older couple starts washing each other next to you, in a very uncomfortable way. You decide to leave, hastily.
13. Back up the wet locker room steps. Trudge back to get your plastic contraption. Struggle to change without dropping your clothes. Realize you forgot underwear and a bra because you were wearing workout clothes on top of your suit. Rookie mistake. Leave without your shoes so you don't get yelled at, leave the locker room, put them on, and walk home.
14. You never come back.
While this post is in jest, it also genuinely stressed me out. Just goes to show you that cultural difference exist even in the most mundane of spaces. And that our way of doing it and our reasoning can be completely at odds with others. I still think the swimming etiquette as it applies to the pool is actually problematic in France, but that's another story. Sometimes the small things get to you. You want the small things to be easy since the big ones (i.e. visas, language learning, etc) are hard enough. Unfortunately, the small things often aren't very easy in France.
In the end, as my good friend Lizzie says, if you don't laugh, you'll cry. Hope this made you laugh even a little today :)
