The Sommerbad in Volkspark Humboldthain feels like home to me. Rain or shine, I’ve spent hours in this public pool. It’s not a light-hearted summer fling. It’s true love to a point where I run past during off-season—which is the majority of the year—to peek through the fence and check on the pallid basins, the withering slide and the leafless trees waiting for the visitors to return. By summer the facility will be as neat as always—a true working class idyll with bright blue water, lush green trees and quaint flat-roofed structures. If it wasn’t for the ridiculously strict regulations, ...