It was a fairly grey day when I got up. I had some butter and chocolate yoghurt/pudding things I was hoping to keep cool but the air conditioning had decided at some point overnight that the room was cold enough and stopped (it wasn’t). I’d enjoyed how cold the room was last night but it was warm again this morning. And despite being grey and damp outside, it was also warm. I started with the u-bahn station around the corner to get a 24-hour transport ticket but the machine was out of order. Fine, I’ll do it online. But it wouldn’t work. Oh, that was frustrating. Eventually, I had to give up and walk in the direction of Friedrichstrasse. Down the road, I found another u-bahn station and that did have a working ticket machine. I validated it there and then, even though I’d had no intention of getting on the train by then, but since it was validated and my 24 hours had started so I thought I might as well use it.

Once I’d done my important shopping at Friedrichstrasse, I headed for Brandenburg Gate. There was a lot of very loud music from a big stage immediately behind it and lots festival stuff in front of it – fences, portacabins, generators, toilets etc. I managed to get through down the side but you couldn’t see it any better from the front. The festival was fenced off and evidently hadn’t started yet. I finally figured out what was going on from the little pink tents nearby for media and photos – this is Berlin Pride and it was today. So a glimse of Brandenburg Gate and then over to the Reichstag Building. Now, this was a bit unexpected. You always see the big glass dome but it’s actually surprisingly hard to see it – there isn’t a good angle from nearby and I haven’t found one a bit further away either yet. I might have quite liked to go up there but I didn’t fancy queuing in that heat, going through security in the heat or climbing a glass dome in the heat. It was hot.

I’d seen a u-bahn stop for Checkpoint Charlie while I was failing to buy a ticket so I took a couple of trains and found myself just round down the road. There are a lot of tourists taking grinning photos at the checkpoint and utterly oblivious to the fact that this is still a functioning city road. By now I was hot and thirsty and my bag, frustratingly, had split open along the top seam. This yellow bag has been an endless problem. It’s basically the same pattern as my green and orange travel bag but the green bag is in great condition, despite much heavier use than the yellow one. So I needed a needle and some thread and luckily there was the sort of shop that might sell such things right outside the station.

By the time I got back to my local station, it was pouring with rain. I scurried to the nearby Rewe for some fresh bread for lunch and then scurried home holding my bag together. I ate fresh bread and cheese and then sat and sewed my bag back together.

Because it was so hot, I decided there and then to go to the outdoor pool on the river so I booked my ticket and then decided to spend the afternoon having another go at Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag Building because they hadn’t captured my imagination in the morning. They still didn’t. But now Pride was started. I wasn’t surprised because I’d seen a lot of people on the tram and on the streets wearing rainbows, sequins, leather shorts and crop tops, so I strolled in. Nope, still can’t see Brandenburg Gate properly, but I quite enjoyed singing Queen, Abba and Atomic Kitten on my way down the road. Then back to the u-bahn and I headed for the pool. It was early but it was hot and Berlin was busy. The u-bahn was spectacularly busy. I’ve never been on a train where I’m literally squished between people so tightly that I can’t fall over even when people stand on my toes. I eventually concluded they were heading for the start of the Pride parade – having seen the kiosks and the street party, I’d decided there wasn’t any parade in Berlin but there was. Not that it makes sense to take the route they all appeared to be taking but they were clearly all going somewhere together.

After the chaotic u-bahn, I got on a bus because it was easier than walking a couple of hundred metres to the pool. It’s outside of the touristy part of Berlin and in a part that’s more what I expect from the non-touristy parts – the sort of Berlin that’s got loud techno music and warehouses and everyone’s dressed all in black. That sort of Berlin. The pool is sandwiched between two warehouses and uses part of one of them for its toilets. The changing rooms are four tiny cubicles up against the opposite wall and three blocks of tiny lockers. But I was early and the ticket is as much for access to the pool area as the pool itself. When I said “Oh, I thought there was a bar and I could sit and have a drink before it was time to go in” they let me in cheerfully enough provided I went to the bar. So I did. I was thirsty. It’s hot and I’d just been squished into a u-bahn train with at least a million too many people for its capacity.

Badeschiff itself is a swimming pool set in an old barge, floating in the river. The river itself is too polluted to swim in so they put in this pool, partly as an art installation and now it’s a favourite summer cooling-off spot. It’s got sand, so the bit I could see from the top, from my seat underneath a little balcony, was a beach club. Sand, a bar sheltered under the end of the warehouse, deckchairs and I could see a hint of bright blue over by the river. When the time came, I changed, stowed my stuff in a locker – I’d done the reading and knew to bring my padlock with me – and then went down to the pool. There’s an entire deck just covered with deckchairs down by the river and then a little jetty overhanging the pool. A sign said 24 degrees. Coldest 24 degrees I’ve ever come across. There are two ladders down to the water, where the top step overhangs slightly and between the overhang and my sunglasses, I couldn’t quite figure out where the water actually was. It looked a long way down. And it was cold! I managed to get down to the penultimate rung but I couldn’t just let go and land in the water. Instead I grabbed the side of the jetty and managed to swing myself round and down onto the ledge that runs around the pool. The pool is 2m deep but it has a good ledge on the long edges and a huge edge on the short edges. You can quite comfortably just sit there enjoying the sun, although if you sit on the edge of the barge, the lifeguard will object.

After five minutes, it stopped feeling so cold so I shuffled along to the big ledge at the end and perched there with my legs dangling into the depths and after another five minutes, I began to feel like I could maybe swim. So I slithered in and managed to make my way to the other end. It was cold but the more I swam, the less I felt it. In fact, eventually it began to feel quite comfortable. I would swim ten lengths. Then I’d actually been for a swim. Make it twenty. I had a vague memory of seeing that the pool was 33 point something metres long and so I sat in the shallows at the end and did some mental maths. A standard 25m swimming pool takes 40 lengths to reach a kilometre. How many in a 33.xxm pool? Call it 33. In fact, 32 is an easier number to maths with and whatever answer I came up with, I’d probably be doing more anyway. Ok, well, 10 lengths is 320m. 20 lengths is therefore 640m and 30 lengths is 960m. Only another 40m to that kilometre, so that’s a little over one length. There and back again, that would make up that 40m with metres to spare. 32 lengths to a kilometre. And so that’s what I did. And when I’d done it, I had a go at the maths for a mile. I can’t remember how many metres to a mile but if there’s 62 miles to 100km and I’d done 32 lengths… my maths ran out but I thought I needed another 15-20 lengths to get to the mile. My phone says I needed 51 lengths, so that’s another 19. I’ll bear it in mind in case I go again tomorrow.

I had a choice of ways home. I took the bus back to the u-bahn and decided the easiest way was to go to the end of the line at Warsaw Station, up to Friedrichstrasse and then two stops home. Scuppered, of course, by the entire s-bahn through the city centre being closed. By the time I was cursing Alexanderplatz, I could have been home if I’d gone much the same route I’d arrived. But I had a go on the tram eventually and got home feeling a little less refreshed than I’d been immediately after my swim.

So that’s my day. Not hugely excited by the proper Berlin tourist must-dos but I did enjoy my swim, even if my initial response to the water was “I’ve been waiting here over an hour and now it’s too cold to even get in??”. Definitely add Badeschiff to your summer Berlin must-do list.