Berlin is in for a hot weekend, but thunderstorms might interrupt the sunny parts. The Finals, a national athletics competition, is on, which is why the area around Brandenburg Gate looks different right now. In the meantime, improvements for Berlin’s public swimming pools were announced.
Berlin, June 25th, 2022 (The Berlin Spectator) — In Berlin, the Finals are taking place, the national German championship which includes athletics of several kinds. This explains all the action in front of Brandenburg Gate. On Friday, passers-by who wanted to shoot selfies there ran into a major hot-put competition right in front of Berlin’s (and Germany’s) most famous landmark.
Tiny Public Beach
The weekend began with a lot of summer heat that slowed Berliners down. Yesterday, 32 degrees Centigrade (89.6 degrees Fahrenheit) were measured. Only very few ramblers were seen at the German capital’s Tiergarten park, even though the shade the trees provided did make a difference. A few hours later, at about 5:00 p.m., rain clouds appeared above the Charlottenburg borough and other parts of Berlin.
Here, people frequented cafés and bars. Their goal was to cool down from the inside by pouring drinks of all kinds down their throats. Sixteen kilometers (10 miles) away, at Wannsee, one of Berlin’s nicest lakes, they followed another approach. Ahead of this weekend, on Thursday, our reporter was one of the individuals who jumped into the water at a tiny public beach known as Badestelle Heckeshorn and liked it a lot. On the opposite side of the lake, the Wannsee Beach Bath welcomes lots of guest every day.
Numb and Tired
So do other public swimming pools all over Berlin. The state-owned company that runs them, Berliner Bäder-Betriebe (BBB), announced it had improved things after two issues popped up in the past days. On Monday, the police had to end a big brawl at a pool in Berlin’s Steglitz borough. That is why more security guards were employed. And because BBB’s ticketing website did not withstand the huge demand, it was improved.
Back in the city center, in front of the Russian Embassy at Unter den Linden boulevard, there was only one protester who demanded an end to the Russian war of aggression against its neighbor Ukraine on Friday afternoon. The flowers, notes and fluffy animals people had left at the location earlier, to commemorate the victims of the war, were dusty and partially yellowed. One hundred and twenty days since Russia started attacking Ukraine, people may have become numb and tired of demonstrating. Also it was simply too hot for rallies of any kind.
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Thunderstorms and Hail
Berliners and tourists in the capital will have to expect more very hot days. For today (Saturday), up to 30 degrees Centigrade (86 degrees Fahrenheit) were forecast. But the sunny parts of the day might be interrupted by thunderstorms that might even bring in hail. It is supposed to look similar on Sunday, with a maximum temperature of 32 degrees C (89.6 degrees F). There might be even more thunderstorms on Monday. This is when the heat is supposed to increase to 36 degrees C (97 degrees F).
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