Zurich - Opfikon Overhaul

Opfikon Festival - 50 Years

It’s the year of Opfikon’s 50th birthday this year, so there are plenty of things going on. It was the main festival last weekend (and the weather has continued to be good, luckily for them), so there were fairground rides erected just by my local swimming pool, a mile of international food stalls, and various games you could take part in (such as a bucking bronco). I took the opportunity to wander round and saw a few bits of Opfikon I hadn’t noticed before.

At the open-air pool they had a competition as to who could jump and make the biggest splash. I was going to take a photo for this blog (if I could catch it just right), but I got called out on the megaphone with an instruction not to take photos. So, I thereby made my own metaphorical splash.

Although it was Opfikon’s main event last weekend, they are organizing things all year, including an ice rink from October through to December I think. They now have some funky wooden benches down by the river, too, so presumably that was also an initiative to mark the 50th celebrations.

However, I’m a bit gutted that they are closing my local pool for 18 months (18 months!!!) to refurbish it. That’s a long time for it to be closed and it means that next year I won’t be able to use it at all. This is a major dent to my quality of life.

The pool at Kloten, which I think is the nearest one has leafleted all the flats (well, mine at any rate). They are offering 13 months membership for the price of 12 to those in Opfikon. That’s not much good for me, since I’m not here for the entire year and they charge those who aren’t residents of Kloten more. I think they should give us the discount that the locals get, given that it’s now our nearest option! 

As it is, my swim will no longer be just a ten-minute walk and finding a new pool to use in the interim will mean that I will have to organize myself and possibly – horror of horrors – have to get up earlier, too, if I’m to fit my swim in before work. This isn't the life I'd envisaged!

Anyway, I’ll have to work out what to do about that next year. For this year, I can probably use Seebach as long as the weather is good (it’s only 7 minutes away by bus and it’s a heated outdoor pool [25 degrees], but still not much fun in the rain and they sometimes stop you from swimming if it looks too stormy). My pool shuts at the end of July, so Seebach should be fine for the most part, but next year I’ll definitely need some swimming time at Kloten.

That’s just as I was thinking how ideal my flat was because it was so close to the pool. Pah, no longer so ideal!