Umberto, where do you train?

I went to the swimming pool tonight and I was just a little bit shocked. It was, in a word, tiny. I thought about all the swimming pools we have in California (the outdoor ones) and it’s no wonder that Americans (and Australians) dominate the Olympics in swimming. We, quite simply, have better swimming pools and training facilities. In California, I think we have more swimming pools than Italy has churches which means we have a truckload.

The locker room was pretty interesting. The toilets had doors but didn’t really have locks or, for that matter, actual door latches. In fact, there was a sign in the toilet that discussed conducting yourself in a civil manner. Well, goodness gracious I thought, did we have to actually BE TOLD that? More to come on this locker room later.

The actual swimming pool was five lanes large. Talk about cramped quarters. I felt like it was a smaller version of the Palazzo because people were kind of circling about like they do in the Palazzo. There were the guys trying to pick up on the girls and then there were the various social circles chatting away. I got into the actual swimming area and thought, really, is anyone actually going to get into the pool? I waited for someone else to jump in first because I didn’t know if there were some sort of protocol that I had to follow here. When I finally got into the pool, I thought it was strange that you could get into any lane that you liked. It didn’t matter if you were fast or slow; it was just a huge random congregation. For those actually trying to do a workout (myself and probably only me), it was a little difficult. And not a big surprise to me, but people were swimming like they drive.

I decided that I now understood why I only knew of one well known Italian swimmer. I also decided that I knew why Italians were good at the other water sport, water polo, and came up with three solid reasons:

1. It’s the aquatic version of soccer. My friend Brian pointed this out to me a while ago.
2. Italy is close to the former Yugoslavia.
3. Americans move to Italy to play in the professional Italian leagues.

After about 40 or so less-than-satisfying minutes, back to the locker room I went. Earlier, I had buried my wallet deep into my backpack because I had a pair of sunglasses stolen at the pool in Milan a while back. They were too easily available and accessible. Having learned something from that experience, I did my best to bury, deeply, the only real thing of value that I have in my bag. As I am about to rinse off, the first thing that I notice is that there aren’t really any valves for the showers and that’s because you have to pay 10 cents for the shower at this machine that kind of looks like you should be buying a coke out of it. Except, in this case, you have to buy your shower. Perfect! Here I am, dripping wet, with my wallet buried deep within my bag and I have to fish for change. I mentally congratulated myself on actually remembering my change too. It was a good thing as I didn’t see a slot for the AMEX.

All in all, not the best swimming pool experience, but I did learn new word when talking to the person next to me. Turns out the 4,60€ was worth it after all.