Triathletes of Berlin, where do you go open water swimming?

yeah the buoys at schlachtensee are the go-to but if you want zero drama try the teufelssee in grunewald, it's smaller and way quieter, no beach vibe at all. just a little wooden dock and you can do loops, water's super clear, i've seen people with wetsuits doing intervals there all summer.

also check the langer see in köpenick, the tri club from ssc uses it but the public entry near the damm is chill, you can swim the whole length north-south without hitting anyone, just mind the rowing boats on weekends.

and honestly the early morning tip is the real answer, i do 7am at schlachtensee and it's like a private pool, the ducks are the only ones watching u. bring a bright cap tho, the paddleboarders show up around 9 and they're not looking where they're going lol.

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the Wannsee is the classic one but it gets packed. if you want a proper swim without the beach crowd, check out the DLRG station at Kleine Badewiese, they have a marked course for lap swimmers and it's way more chill than the main Strandbad. entry is like 5 euros and you can leave your stuff in a locker while you're in the water.

another option is the Müggelsee, but go to the east side near Rahnsdorf, not the big public beach. there's a swimming club there, SSC, and they're cool with solo swimmers using the buoys during off-hours. just check their schedule online so you don't interrupt a training session.

honestly the best trick is to go early, like 6am. water's flat, no wind, and you have the lake to yourself. most tri people I know do their long swims at Schlachtensee before work and it's a different vibe entirely.

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another one nobody mentioned is the krumme lanke, it's right next to schlachtensee but way more lowkey. there's a little grass area behind the segelclub and you can just jump in, swim the length of it, it's like 1.2km one way. no buoys or anything but the water's calm and the locals are used to tri people doing laps.

if u want something more structured, the regattastrecke in grünau is literally built for it, it's a 2km straight course with lane lines in the water during the season. the dlg opens it for open swimming on weekday evenings for like 3 euros, it's mostly rowers during the day but after 6pm it's all swimmers. feels super professional, good for pacing practice before race day.

just be careful with the wind on the bigger lakes, the chop can mess with ur sighting. i learned that the hard way at müggelsee once, ended up swimming diagonally for half an hour lol

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Worth noting that Berlin street names have official umlaut and ß rules that trip people up, so a sign showing "Strasse" versus "Straße" is not actually a spelling error, just an older transcription. Same with "ue" versus "ü" (e.g. "Kantstrasse" vs "Kantstraße"), both are considered valid renderings and you'll see the ß version on the blue Schilder and the ss version on older plaques or in databases that predate Unicode. If the difference you're seeing is between those two forms, there's nothing to fix and both are technically correct.

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if the signs u mean are the old enamel ones on the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated. the binding version is whatever is in the Berliner Strassenverzeichnis plus the entry in the Liegenschaftskataster, so if u tell me the street i can point u to the right Bezirksamt Mitte or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf page. tbh the merged district thing is real but the facade signs are a separate story, theyre basically museum pieces at this point

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honestly thats super common in Charlottenburg, the district offices were merged from older Bezirke and nobody ever fixed all the Schilder. if its a real street you can check the official strassenverzeichnis on berlin.de, that list is what the Burgeramt actually goes by. which street is it? some of the Kaiserdamm / Kantstrasse signs are notorious for this.

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