Have you ever wondered what swimming in the Charles River would be like? Have you ever, on a hot summer’s day, craved diving into the city’s water for a refreshing dip over lunch or after work? In Switzerland, this is exactly what people do on warm summer days. Urban river and lake swimming is an irreplaceable part of summer lifestyle. Whether before work, over lunch, after school, or when the shopping is done, everyone finds their own rhythm at their favorite bath to take a refreshing dip, lie down, read the newspaper, sunbathe, watch the waves or meet for coffee.

In a joint effort to bring swimming back to the Charles River, the Consulate of Switzerland/swissnex Boston is partnering with the Charles River Conservancy for the exhibit “Think Swim, Think Swiss: Bringing Swiss Style Swimming to the Charles River”. As the water quality of the Charles River continues to improve, it is time to make river swimming in the United States a reality as well. The exhibition, consisting of three dimensional Swiss cross kaleidoscopes, displays examples of Swiss bathing structures to explore the technological, environmental and cultural context of river swimming.

Let Swiss water protection efforts and swimming culture serve as an inspiration of how urban swimming in America could look like in the future. Join us this summer for a display of the exhibit to explore Swiss urban swimming culture!

The exhibit is sponsored by ThinkSwiss – Brainstorm the future. ThinkSwiss is a US-wide program on education, research and innovation with activities around subjects such as clean technologies, sustainability, green building, and natural resources. The program is under the auspices of Presence Switzerland (PRS), the Swiss State Secretariat for Education and Research (SER) and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.

Partners:

Consulate of Switzerland/swissnex Boston www.swissnexboston.org
Charles River Conservancy www.thecharles.org