Ingrid’s swimming lessons brought to mind my own first ones. We had mandatory swimming lessons when I was in 2nd grade, 8 years old. I remember them as scary and not much fun, and I remember how the pool water made my eyes sting and how awful those exercises were where we were supposed to keep our eyes open in the water in order to pick up some ball or thing from the bottom of the pool. I still totally hate opening my eyes underwater, it makes my eyes itch and my tears run.

I didn’t learn to swim in those lessons, because I fell ill with pneumonia after a few of them, and you weren’t given a second chance if you missed the first one. I later picked up swimming on my own, in a lake during the summer.

Tartu’s old swimming pool has been abandoned in favour of the new water centre that was built some years ago. We walked past the old one this summer. For some reason the pool is still there, and so are the poolside seats, although the building around it has been torn down, and a new building is standing where the showers and changing rooms used to be. In the photo below the big pool is in the front – you can see the darkish rectangles at the end of each lane as well as the spots where the lane marker ropes used to be attached. The teaching pool is in the rear, behind the big one.