Daniel Schledt sprints across the lawn, climbs over the barrier, quickly puts his bag down and jumps headfirst into the water right next to the “No jumping!” sign.

When he emerges, he calls out: "First!".

This is exactly how he managed, as he says himself, in many previous years to open the outdoor pool season with the first arm stroke before the next swimmer.

"I'm always there to swim," he says.

"It's a special day every year.

Daniel Meuren

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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On Saturday, the Freibad Hausen was, as usual, the first Frankfurt swimming pool to start the outdoor pool season. A good 20 visitors were already waiting at the cash desk before ten o'clock until they were greeted by City Councilor Mike Josef (SPD) and Boris Zielinski, Managing Director of Bäderbetriebe Frankfurt were let in.

This year, the "swimming" took place later than usual before Corona, when the "Hausener" always opened its doors on Good Friday.

Fortunately, however, this had nothing to do with the pandemic, as in the two previous years, when Hausen was only accessible to swimmers after lockdowns in June.

Two pieces of turf

This winter, on the other hand, the pool was transformed into a temporary indoor pool with an air dome for the first time.

The public baths in Frankfurt wanted to compensate for at least part of the water area that was lost when the old Rebstockbad was demolished.

Boris Zielinski now rates the project as a great success.

"We had 55,000 visitors in the five months, after an initial trial phase with clubs and schools, 500 swimmers came every day," he said.

"It is a vote with your feet that the air support hall was accepted." The success gives impetus to the next project of this kind in Nieder-Eschbach.

In the meantime, there was hardly a trace of the transformation in Hausen: the container that houses the generator for the air dome is still standing at the edge of the pool.

In addition, two pieces of rolled turf were laid where the hall structure stood on the lawn.

Meanwhile, the rest of the lawn has already recovered from the sunless months in the past ten days and is looking almost dazzling.

The water, meanwhile, was 25.2 degrees warm, which made you forget the dingy weather once you got in the water.

"We are particularly pleased that we can largely return to normality," said City Councilor Josef, who is also responsible for the pools as head of sports.

"We no longer need time slots, no more vaccination status checks," he said.

“But we're keeping things that our visitors have come to appreciate, like cleaning intervals.

People really appreciated the hygiene measures.”

The pool companies also want to open the other Frankfurt outdoor pools soon, but are hoping for a few warm sunny days beforehand so that the water does not have to be heated up in an energy-intensive manner.

"But that should be possible in May as soon as possible," said Zielinski.