Swimming pools and rubbish bins

After a week of cloudy and rainy weather, the last two days have been almost warm and occasionally even sunny.  Despite being a major fan of water, I haven't gone into the pools or river yet.  But I got close today and took some pictures of the free downtown swimming area right next to the river.

Good eyes can see the air temperature is 15 C / 59 F.  

The water temperature is warmer at 21 C / 70 F!

The Bundeshaus (Parliament Building) is the large building on the hill behind the pool.

There is a diving board and a diving platform.

This one complex has a large swimming pool, a separate diving pool, two large kiddie pools, and a "naturist" area where you can choose to be clothing-optional as they say.  I didn't find that area but I wasn't looking too hard either!

Some people were swimming in the river, but I didn't get any pictures of them.  But I did get a picture of this raft going by.

Looks like so much fun!

So why did I add rubbish bins to this post?  We have been so impressed with how clean Bern is.  There is a street sweeper that goes down our street every Monday.  There are city workers picking up trash all over the city and along the trails.  And note how many rubbish bins they have just in this grassy area by the pool.  With good eyes you should be able to see four bins for every one picnicking group!

Lots of pristine grass with NO litter!

Maybe we could solve our unemployment and litter problem in the United States with some solid Swiss cleanliness hires!  Of course, we would have to increase our public budget for that as I'm sure private enterprise isn't interested in supporting that...