Something that was important for me to do at least a few times while I’m in Russia is to go swimming. I’ve been swimming since I was six years old, and I absolutely love it. It’s great because at Carleton, even when our swim team is out of season, there are two pools on campus with lap swim hours that are free for students. The situation at Moscow State is similar, but also very different.
The first thing I had to do before I could even get into the locker room was to buy a sort of ticket. Lap swim here isn’t free, and everyone has to have a ticket in order to get keys to a locker in the locker room. It only costs 60 rubles for one visit if you’re a student, which is just under one American dollar. Once I had bought the ticket from the office, I went down to the floor below where the locker rooms and pool are. I gave my one-time ticket and student ID to the secretary there, and received a key to a small locker in the locker room. Once in the locker room, there’s a place right inside the door designated for taking off street shoes and changing into tapochki, which are basically just sandals or flip flops. I didn’t realize I needed them, and while I got away with it the first time, the second time I went swimming I got yelled at by one of the workers for not having them. I was the only person not wearing them. Some people I’ve swam with wear sandals on the pool deck, but I’d say for the most part in the United States people are fine going barefoot. Not in Russia though.
Once I’d changed, I went out to the pool area. The pool itself reminds me a lot of one of the pools on Carleton’s campus, Cowling pool. It feels very underground, although there are a few windows along one side of the wall. There are only four lanes, 25 meters long. There’s a shallow end and a deep end, with small diving blocks on the deep end side.
The schedule of the pool here works this way: you buy a ticket for a pre-set, forty minute chunk of time. Once you get onto the pool deck, you have to wait until the previous forty minutes ends and the trainer clears the pool before you can get in. Then it’s pretty much a free for all.
What I’ve come to realize is that the people who do lap swim are recreational swimmers, not necessarily competitive swimmers. I don’t really fit in, and it’s near impossible to do a set because there are usually 3-5 people in a lane that stop every 25 or 50 meters. It is really cool to see how many people like to swim who aren’t necessarily “swimmers.” That part makes me happy. I truly believe swimming is the best sport for so many reasons, so I love seeing other people who enjoy it and love it like I do.
