Evening swim with L.

The little sign outside the bath says that the water temperature is only one-degree Celcius less than the air temperature. Diving in, it is still refreshing. Our bodies immediately cool down. “I feel like there should have been a hissing sound when I got in,” she says as she does her first strokes in the water towards the boardwalk that circumvents the bath. The water is so clear you can see the ground. Pebbles, and aquatic plants swaying below our feet. After a short swim, we relax on our towels and snack on french fries. Soon the sky darkens and we sigh in relief at the prospect of rain. I imagine the apple tree next to us making similar noises when the first drops will hit its leaves. We are already on our way back by then, across the boardwalk to the bus stop. Petrichor – the smell of rain on dry soil – hits our noses. I take deep breaths and tell L. that I read somewhere that we love this smell so much because humankind relied on rain for survival. I guess to our brains the smell is all about hope, having a future, life. For me, it is also a nostalgic smell. It will forever be connected to childhood summers and weirdly enough the feeling of exposed aggregate concrete – in German, we call it “Waschbeton” – below my bare feet. As we speed towards the city center along the lake on our bus seats, we marvel at how the color of the lake can change in an instant. While we were swimming, it was tinted in a calm bright turquoise, by now it turned into a darker blueish green. Not raging, but still, almost like an ocean.