Seventeen years ago I was convinced that learning to ask “où est la piscine?” and “Comment t’appelles-tu ?” was a complete waste of my time. Why, I wondered, was Mr Mutton wasting my time with lists of words which I couldn’t pronounce and would probably never use when I could be filling pencil cases with gas from the Bunsen burner and making them explode?
Well, today I was eating my own (English) words. Finally, some 70000+ days after I was forced to learn this phrase I got to ask “où est la piscine?”. Now, I don’t want to re-ignite the
why do we learn French? debate (see the comments) because this doesn’t significantly change anything, but I should at least be grateful to Mr Mutton and the UK educational system for preparing me for one small event in my future life.
Anyway, not only did I ask where the swimming pool was but I even swam in the thing! …and let me tell you this – asking where it is, is nowhere near a satisfactory level of vocabulary to prepare for the experience.
If you have 3.50 Euros, tight-fitting Speedo pants and a swimming hat, you too can swim in this pool.
Firstly, how do you ask for one ticket to swim please? (swimming-pool, pis-cine, swim = pis?) eh? maybe? …well, I wasn’t about to stand there shouting “moi piss”… so, I fell back on the much more useful “do you speak English?” (she didn’t) and then ‘sealed the deal’ by pointing at me and pretending to swim.
Proud of my achievement, I quickly made a nuisance of myself by getting lost and walking around the corner and directly back into her office which I thought was the changing room. She sympathetically rectified the situation and took me to the real changing rooms which were the strangest I’ve ever been to. In fact, the whole swimming experience was one of the strangest I’ve ever had, and I’ve had a lot.
After changing in the very small personal cubicle, I ventured out, only to be promptly returned by the changing-room professional (great job) to borrow or buy myself some regulation tight-fitting swimming pants from the receptionist. You can imagine the sign language required to do this! …and there were school kids watching…
Then, having changed again, I made a second attack on the swimming pool entrance, but of course I still wasn’t looking ridiculous enough and the changing room guy stopped me again because I didn’t have a hat! A swimming hat! Seriously, wtf? I’m bald! Well, thankfully, the guy (who was quite enjoying this) took pity on me and gave me a nice, bright-yellow spare and one and once I’d squeezed it over the least-hairy part of my bearded head – he let me through.
I went off to swim like some Linford Christie-Duncan Goodhew hybrid who’d escaped from a smutty 1950’s postcard…
Anyway, I put in some good swimming (although I’ve no idea how long I swam for because there was no clock), rinsed myself down in the freezing string-operated showers and left feeling humiliated but healthy.
Now, for the benefit of humanity, here is a summary of my euro-swimming experience: The Ian Bearder guide to the pros and cons of swimming etiquette/rules in England, Slovenia, Hungary, Ukraine and Belgian.
England
