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DiveWithSteini · Herrenberg

Sven & the DiveWithSteini Base

DiveWithSteini is deliberately small. You do not speak to a call centre, train in changing groups or sit through theory in an anonymous seminar room.

  • Sven Steinhardt · owner and scuba instructor
  • Daniel Bauer · scuba instructor on the team
  • Historic vaulted cellar at Hasenplatz 4
Contact Sven directlyInstagram
Scuba Diving International (SDI)Technical Diving International (TDI)
Official SDI/TDI Facility

International training standards, personally delivered from our own base in Herrenberg.

Facility framework. Personal attention, time and responsibility are the DiveWithSteini difference.

Listed in the official SDI/TDI facility directory (opens at tdisdi.com)

Personal

How diving found its way into my life

In 2003 meningitis abruptly interrupted normal life and changed my perspective on things I had taken for granted. A year later diving entered the picture. I certainly had no plan that it would one day become a dive school. What I did find underwater was something that has stayed with me ever since: a focus on what matters.

Underwater, rushing or pretending does not help. You breathe, look, decide and act. More than twenty years later that has become part of the way I teach. I do not want someone to “pass” a skill for a moment. I want it understood and available when conditions are worse than planned.

Professionally I have spent many years working in technology, training and teaching. That experience also shapes my diving courses: less show, more time, honest feedback and another repetition when it is not quite there yet. Anyone interested in the scientific side can find it collected in one place under “Research & Knowledge”.

Sven Steinhardt, scuba instructor and founder of DiveWithSteini
Daniel Bauer scuba diving
On the team

Daniel Bauer

Daniel is a scuba instructor on the team, not a co-owner. He supports courses, guided dives and training sessions. With two participants, this often lets us work with additional qualified supervision.

We do not have to solve every situation in exactly the same way. What matters is that a decision remains safe, understandable and workable for the diver in front of us.

Vaulted cellar · Official SDI/TDI Facility

The DiveWithSteini Base at Hasenplatz

The vaulted cellar is probably the most unusual part of DiveWithSteini before you even get into the water. The historic vault combines our training room, divers’ bar, equipment, compressor and workshop. Theory is discussed here, equipment is configured, regulators are dropped off for service, and dives are debriefed afterwards.

It is not a glossy showroom. It is a working and meeting place for divers. Small, independent and full of character. Visits are by appointment.

The small golden boar emblem belongs to Sven and Daniel. It is not an agency or a second brand, just the crew sign of a long shared diving story, and of course it hangs on the cellar wall.

Historic DiveWithSteini vaulted cellar in Herrenberg

My path to becoming an instructor

Instructor training in Switzerland, not everything looked elegant.
Übung im Becken, Ausbildung zum Tauchlehrer
Übung im Becken, Ausbildung zum Tauchlehrer
Position halten, bis sie sitzt
Position halten, bis sie sitzt
Theorie in voller Montur, auch das gehört dazu
Theorie in voller Montur, auch das gehört dazu

Every beginning was difficult, mine too, as you can see. I deliberately do not show only perfect trim here.

My instructor training at Vero Tauchsupply in Switzerland involved longer days than expected, plenty of cold water and a team that let very little slide. At the time, some exercises felt anything but elegant. That is precisely why the footage still matters to me.

The useful part was not one perfect exercise. It was the working method that remained afterwards: look closely, understand the reason for a problem, repeat it without ego, and stop pretending that a certification card makes someone finished.

If you are currently struggling with buoyancy, trim or a skill that seems easy for everyone else: I also hung in the water like a sack of potatoes, and in my case it was filmed.

Why I teach with SDI/TDI

The agency influences how people are trained, not just what appears on the certification card. That is why this choice belongs here rather than in the small print.

Why I teach with SDI/TDI

Because SDI was the first agency to treat the dive computer as standard equipment rather than an accessory. Everyone dives with a computer today, SDI simply stopped teaching tables as if that were not the case, and started teaching people to understand the device they actually carry.

Because the standards are clear without being bloated. I know exactly what I have to teach and where I have room to work with the person in front of me. In a one-to-one course that room is everything: one person needs three attempts at mask clearing, the next one needs none and would rather spend the time on buoyancy.

And because SDI and TDI sit under the same roof. Whoever starts with me on an Open Water course can go all the way to technical diving without changing agency, without re-doing courses and without a certification card that suddenly counts for nothing. That matters more than it sounds, I have seen too many people stuck because their path ended at an agency boundary.

And what I like most about SDI: the agency puts the training first, not itself. The certifications are recognised worldwide, you can dive anywhere with them, continue anywhere and join any group. What counts in the end is what you can do in the water. That is exactly what the training is built around, and exactly why I teach with it.

Come and see the cellar

For a first meeting, equipment advice or a service drop-off, we arrange a time in advance. Coffee and dive stories are easier to organise than fixed shop hours.

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Sven Steinhardt standing on a pebble beach by the sea
Off duty

Also just a person who loves the sea

Not every day is a diving day. Some days it is enough to stand at the water and know what is down there. That perspective shapes the training: diving is not a conveyor belt of certifications, it is something you want to still enjoy in twenty years. That is the standard your training is built to.

Our real base

The vaulted cellar, no stock photos.

Training, meeting, equipment and filling all happen here.

Our scuba base in the historic vaulted cellar in Herrenberg.
Our scuba base in the historic vaulted cellar in Herrenberg.
Divers’ bar, training area and meeting place in the vaulted cellar.
Divers’ bar, training area and meeting place in the vaulted cellar.
The actual DiveWithSteini filling station in Herrenberg.
The actual DiveWithSteini filling station in Herrenberg.
Not staged

Diving also looks like this.

Not every dive ends in a perfect social-media frame. These are real moments from the road, training and everything around it.

Wet, muddy, exhausted — days like this are part of real diving too.
Wet, muddy, exhausted — days like this are part of real diving too.
A personal moment away from the classic instructor portrait.
A personal moment away from the classic instructor portrait.
Crew emblem of Sven and Daniel: a stylised boar wearing a dive mask
Private

Our crew emblem

Sven and Daniel have had this mark since 2022. It is not a certification, not a brand and not an official logo — it is the emblem of a two-person crew: a boar with a dive mask, tusks and a bow tie, because someone thought that was funny once and it stuck. It travels with us on the drysuit bag and on the cellar wall.

Rebillierer · S.F.F.S · est. 2022