For a brief, 2-week instant, some things opened up in Germany – we could make a shopping appointment at H&M, we could book a time slot to visit certain places like zoos and botanical gardens, and kids under 14 could start doing fitness things again, albeit in an extremely limited fashion.

While none of this really changed our lives materially, especially since they’ve already shut things back down, it did mean that Cara could have a few swimming lessons after a long hiatus, and I was reminded of how unique, and somewhat nutty, her swim lessons are. For starters, they’re held in the basement of a house near the summit of the largest mountain in the nearby range. The instructor and her husband run the swim school as a small business – the Dr. Ute Templin Swim School (they are really into their honorifics here). He keeps the books and is the bad-cop overseer making sure the student truly meets leveling-up criteria; she is a compact yet burly, 50-something, slightly cross-eyed dynamo who spends most of each lesson shouting conversation at me while simultaneously shouting instructions to Cara, all in a mix of English and German.

In Dr. Ute Templin’s basement, there’s no coddling – any attempt to hold onto the wall during the 1-hour lesson is met with a ‘Weiter! Weiter! Go, Khaa-ra, off the wall!!’. Dr. Templin could care less how pretty Cara’s stroke is – her focus is on teaching Cara water survival skills – so Cara swims a full hour, every lesson, with no break, while they go over all kinds of scenarios about ‘what happens if’. There is no crawl until much later – swim instructors here claim it takes too much energy and that kids can’t keep it up long enough in an emergency. So Cara’s been using mainly backstroke and breaststroke, her two favorite strokes – no worrying about the water-in-the-mouth horror of freestyle, and easier to maintain for longer, too. There are rules and the rules are followed – no goggles, ever (because if you fall in the water unexpectedly somewhere, you don’t have goggles!), always hair ties, shower before and after, and we have to bring our own slippers to change into in order to walk through their house.

There is a dog named Anna who is involved with the check-in process; there is a teenage daughter who wishes there weren’t so many people trooping through her house. There are gummi bears, suckers, and prizes from a treasure chest after every lesson – I imagine this is a concession given the somewhat strict nature of the lessons. And, there is a ceremony after every leveling-up – clip below so you can get a feel for the whole experience.

Could I have chosen to send Cara to the local pool? For sure. There’s a beautiful new facility just a couple of miles away (unfortunately, it’s only been open a few months over the last two years) and I’m sure we could have found something there. And Cara’s swim strokes look more like Phoebe running in the park than Katie Ledecky in the pool – we’re not going for beauty here. But I really don’t think you can beat the full Dr. Ute Templin experience – we won’t likely forget that this was where Cara learned to really swim!