Nieder-Erlenbach does not sound like urban canyons, backyards or multi-storey stairwells, even by name.

By bike, the path leads to the district in the north of Frankfurt, as if painted, between Nidda and poppy fields.

Life comes to life along the route on this Saturday in June.

Football is played on numerous fields, in team strength, and a cricket tournament takes place on a freshly mown meadow.

The club area of ​​TSG 1888 Nieder-Erlenbach can be reached via the main road, Erlenbacher Dorfweg and the gravel road Zum Schäferköppel, past allotment gardens.

The facility is also called “The Island” because it lies between the stream of the same name, which is actually lined with alder trees, and a small side canal.

A modern artificial turf pitch and two mini fields, a climbing tower, a facility for archers and a football pitch, which is surrounded by a wide cinder track, are located in the middle of a nature reserve.

A sport with its own language

This sport idyll has had a new attraction for a few weeks: a 230 square meter island in the island. Concrete blocks, meters high and massive, metal bars, hard and unyielding, rubber bollards made of granules. The obstacles, randomly distributed, form a parkour facility, the largest in Frankfurt. Nothing here is coincidental, however, as becomes clear when you watch the traceurs.

Finn Deutsch stands concentrated on the edge of the tartan surface.

Like a skier imagining a run, Deutsch goes through his moves again.

With the difference that only he knows the goal and only he knows how to achieve it.

He jumps on an iron bar, the seven centimeter thick tartan floor springs under his sneakers, he swings forwards, backwards, forwards again, lets go and then lands with a precision jump on a concrete wall about 1.20 meters high, the swing in a crouched position cushioning.

Traceurs are those who draw a line, moves, movements.

Precision jumps are called precise.

Once you start explaining, you can hardly stop.

"Parkour doesn't have that much to do with gymnastics, it's a sport in its own right," says Finn Deutsch and adds: "Parkour is actually about getting from A to B as quickly as possible."

Cost of 200,000 euros

It is the first club training of the parkour group after a long corona break.

And it is the first official opportunity to test the new system.

It took three years from the idea to acceptance by the TÜV.

The heaviest part, the ceiling plate of the “cave”, a central element, weighed three tons.

In the end, the material, transport and construction cost more than 200,000 euros.

That is why it has to be openly accessible, "says Christoph Kratzer," groundskeeper, chairman, press attendant, everything. "

Kratzer wears black workman's trousers, work shoes, frameless glasses, short hair, the T-shirt in his pants. His gait is springy, even without a tartan bottom. Now he stands still for once and greets the almost 20 children and young people who have come to train. "Have fun, train well, and first of all, of course, read the sign," he says and releases the system.

The TSG project group convinced the city that in Nieder-Erlenbach, where the fastest route for parkour athletes is usually not over walls and garages, but over the wide sidewalk, a parkour facility is a project worthy of funding: Anna Riegeler , Julius Kiesau, Julian Weber and Finn Deutsch. The four are now between 17 and 19 years old and still students. From the vague idea of ​​the system, they made a first draft on Kiesau's laptop using a CAD program - without realizing how much work that would bring them.