Don't try this at home. It's not pro­hib­it­ed, but it could come with it's own death penal­ty. Nonethe­less, I swam in the Elbe, near the Övel­gön­ne beach. Not the pop­u­lar part with the bars, but the part down­stream of Zur Elb­ka­te, op­po­site the Lot­sen tow­er. I pre­fer that part be­cause it has nice trees and their shad­ow, so I don't have to cov­er my­self un­der a thick lay­er of sand to pre­vent sun­burn.

So how was the wa­ter? Pret­ty cool. I didn't ex­pect it to be so re­fresh­ing on such a sum­mer's day. Main­ly be­cause I didn't re­mem­ber swim­ming in such a cold riv­er. But the Elbe is no or­di­nary riv­er. It's big, it's bad, two 300 me­ter long ships with 12 me­ter draught can pass each oth­er, and that's also why it is not rec­om­mend­ed to go swim­ming with them. There are waves. The fer­ries of line 62 pass fre­quent­ly, mak­ing quite some waves. It's sweet.

And how was the ground? Pret­ty nasty. The rea­son you go swim­ming is be­cause that's eas­i­er than walk­ing. In­stead of sand there's a lot of peb­bles and rocks and you can't see the ground so as soon as the wa­ter is deep enough to swim you try to get your feet of the ground. And stand­ing on one leg while try­ing to feel with your oth­er foot where it's safe to put it down again with waves rolling in isn't very com­fort­able. There are also some big­ger rocks you could ac­ci­den­tal­ly swim into, so it's rec­om­mend­ed to an­a­lyze the area when the tide is low and swim when the tide is high.

Con­clud­ing? When the weath­er is get­ting re­al­ly hot the Elbe is a nice place to cool down.