Fitness First Frankfurt - Opernplatz

Great to be back in the pool nearly five weeks after coming off my new Yeti SB-140 moutain bike at the Cannock Chase bike park - which earned me ten rather painful stitches in the lower palm!

I'm in Frankfurt for an event - we're rolling out some new features for our Eventware event tech platform and keen to see how they hold up in the real world.

Staying at the Hilton Frankfurt, which has its own great 25m pool - unfortunately closed for maintenance until next week. Luckily, the Hilton staff pointed me to a Fitness First just 200m down the street that's accepting guests in the meantime.

Hard to believe this is the first German pool on the list! I used to visit Germany often and definitely swam in a few pools here before I started documenting them for the blog.

This swim had a lot of “Sprechen Sie Englisch?” moments - from reception, to the half-naked guy in the changing room who showed me how to use the fancy RFID card to open and close a locker, to my lane buddy asking if I wanted to split the lane.

The pool's in a Fitness First health club in Frankfurt city centre - a rather fancy one at that. Several floors of gym, a climbing wall, and other sports facilities descend a few levels from the street-level reception.

Out on the basement pool deck is a three-lane, 25m pool in classic German steel-and-concrete style. The pool itself is a dimpled stainless steel tub with splash plates up the walls and a concrete ceiling overhead, dotted with round light wells. Very cool setup.

I jump in to check how the hand's holding up... not sure what I was expecting - it's pretty much healed over now, but still looks grim. Vaseline seems to be doing the job just fine.

The water is crystal clear, perfectly tempered, and lit from below the surface. I'd planned a slow and easy 1km swim - just enough to count the pool - and ended up doing 48 lengths, broken into a kilometre and a couple of 100s. Pretty slow going, thanks to five weeks off and a few swim buddies doing their best dolphin impressions in the next lane!

Flying back to the UK this afternoon, so it's a quick shower, a wander through leafy Frankfurt suburbs, and a tourist stop at the viewing gallery atop the Frankfurt Main Tower.