North Hesse has apple wine, difficult hills, dangerous levels of friendliness and its own ideas about coffee. But once the jokes about regional character are exhausted, a simpler rule begins to emerge: perhaps politeness belongs less to places than to people. By The Swimming Club, Manfred and Martin, both in Northern Hessen. (You have been…
At a door, in a meeting or beside a plate of office doughnuts, the unwritten rules are everywhere. Most of them work — until we start thinking too hard about them. By Martin & Manfred, (floating in the Swimming Club), somewhere in Germany. Two people reach a door at almost exactly the same moment. It…
The Swimming Club Anti-Handbook for guests who need help recognising when a perfectly pleasant evening is definitely over. By Manfred & Martin, from the Swimming Club. There are many complicated questions in life. When should a guest leave somebody’s house should not be one of them. Unfortunately, it is. The Swimming Club therefore decided to…
By The Swimming Club, aka Martin & Manfred, both in Germany. Music, caravans and the invisible machinery underneath an ordinary good day. Martin likes to listen to music properly. Not as something floating around in the background while he does three other things. He sits on the couch and listens. Sometimes he streams a concert…
By Manfred & Martin, aka The Swimming Club, both in Germany. At Swimming Club, a conversation about useless objects became an experiment in 1995 technology — and a question about what disappears when everything becomes easier. Painful object divorces. Martin does not need long to think about the things he owns but never uses. There…
By Manfred and Martin, both in Germany. The Swimming Club investigates one of everyday life’s stranger mysteries: why ten people waiting for the same thing can produce perfect order, quiet fury, or an entirely new system of civilisation. A queue ought to be one of the simplest human inventions. Somebody is first. Somebody is last….
Ralf has bought the mobile home, Manfred has twenty years of camping behind him, and Martin is beginning to wonder whether he should start playing the lottery. Ralf and his wife have bought a mobile home. Not because they want to park it somewhere and create a smaller version of the life they already have,…
A conversation about concerts, caravans, mowing the lawn and why active rest may have less to do with stopping than with fully entering the experience. This conversation began with a contradiction. Can rest be active? At first, it sounded like one of those modern expressions that should never have been invented. Surely rest means stopping….
A Swimming Club conversation about new cars, old instincts, digital rest, and the strange moment when technology promises comfort but asks you to go to university first. The Car Is No Longer Just a Car This began as a conversation about Digital Rest. Not meditation apps.Not screen-time graphs.Not a clean theory about modern life. It…
In the Swimming Club, sleep began as a practical question. Then it became a conversation about driving, pillows, mosquitos, holidays, smartphones, YouTube, and the strange pressure of having to be fit tomorrow. Sleep that restores sounds peaceful. It sounds like soft pillows, calm breathing, and a person waking up with a clear head, ready for…
