Unlikely Diplomat

I’m going to dig up old embarrassing photos of Husband. And once we all clean up the soda that shot out of our noses after seeing that winner above, I’ll tell you why he’s banned from the community pool in our neighborhood. Surprisingly it has nothing to do with risque European swimwear.

Right across the street from our temporary digs is a lovely little swimming pool that only costs 3 euros. We walk by it on the way to the grocery store (up and down that steeeeeeep freaking hill) and it’s always full of kids and parents having a good time. The Babe loves swimming, so I’ve taken her a few times to splash around and get a few good gulps of chlorinated water.

The pool itself is tiny, and definitely designed for kids- it never gets any deeper than waist high, and there seem to be very few rules regarding rafts, toys, and splashing other people in the face. Everyone is really friendly though, and The Babe enjoys it thoroughly.

I relayed all of this information to Husband one evening, and he said he’d actually like to go check it out. Husband is most certainly a creature built for land, not sea — so the kid pool would actually be just his speed. He figured some water aerobic conditioning might help work out a nagging muscle in his back.

So off he went one evening, just before closing time. And he was knocking on our front door just 20 minutes later, a sheepish grin on his face.

Apparently no one was sitting at the pool’s front desk to take his money when he walked in, so he just sauntered over to a bench, took off his flip flops and headed toward the water. As he did so the children in the deeper end took one look at him and scattered like minnows. All the remaining patrons cleared out as soon as he stepped in.

A little self conscious yet undaunted, Husband continued wading back and forth, checking around for sharks or floating poo or whatever else it was that scared everyone away. Within a few minutes the lifeguard came running out of the ladies locker room shouting in rapid-fire German.

Husband assumed she wanted him to pay, so he pulled a couple euros out of his swim trunks. But the lifeguard shook her head and motioned for him to get out of the pool. She continued talking in urgent German.  Husband shook his head to indicate that his Austrian dialect wasn’t quite up to par. She looked at him sternly and said,

“No man…no child…no swim!”

I guess men are not allowed to swim alone at the pool. So everyone thought Husband was some strange pervert trying to prey on Austrian kids at the local swimming hole. Which is 1) hilarious and 2) a very odd assumption to make at a public pool. Is there some rampant pedophile problem here that we don’t know about?

The lifeguard was understanding, but I don’t think Husband will be going swimming again. Even if he takes The Babe along as proof that he’s not a creep. In his words, “they’ll just think I rented a kid to get in!”

Tags: Husband, weird Austrian pool policies