Sunday, June 18, 2006

Swimming Places, A Comparison, Indiana and Switzerland


One of the great things about where I live in Switzerland is how they do swimming places. Bathing area designers do not feel obligated to have a sandy beaches. This is great. They have grass lawns to stretch out on, and usually trees that provide a fair amount of shade.
Where I grew up in Indiana, when a park puts in a swimming hole, they always trucked in sand. Not nice sand mind you, not the type you would find on an ocean beach, but dirty sand that gets into everything. People in Indiana don’t seem to be able to think that you can have a nice “beach” but no sand. Sand gets to hot in the summer to walk on, gets all over everything you bring to the beach, and is not natural by a swimming hole in Indiana. I don’t mind the sand along the great lakes. It supposed to be there. It’s as if Hoosiers cannot separate the idea of swimming and sand. It annoys me.
Am I the only Hoosier that wants a nice grassy beach to bathe by?