Surfing Munich

I’ve never really known any surfers. I was a kid in California but in the dessert not on the beach. When we did go to the beach the closest I got was boogie boarding (seriously what it is called, or at least was called) or body surfing. In Minnesota I guess you can windsurf, but I don’t really think it is the same thing. My sister while traveling to California with my dad took lessons but I don’t think she has done it since. So what little I know about the sport and sub-culture comes from movies, books, and magazines. You know real reliable fair. So what do I know then about surfing? Not much. Surfers talk funny and use funny phrases. They are all hippies I think. They can’t hold down a real job, and they are adrenaline junkies. Most of this I got from Kenue Reeves movies. Oh yeah and they will surf anything any time and are always looking for the next wave.

So it came as no surprise to me that surfers had found a way to surf in Munich Germany. Which you know has great sea side beaches with huge was – er maybe it doesn’t. But yet her in the middle of a landlocked city in a mountainous region of Europe people were surfing. In fact they were latterly surfing in the down town. And no to answer your question they are not using a surfing machine, wave machine, or virtual reality. They are literally hoping on a board and riding the waves. These waves though are in the middle of a river in what is known as the English Garden, a park twice the size of central park that also contains the largest beirgarten in Munich.

What people have found is that the river is forced into a man made underground tunnel to be routed in part of the city. The tunnel must be larger at it’s mouth then at the outlet because the pressure of the water escaping is quit high. The second part of the set up is that the river dramatically changes depths with in 20 feet of this outlet so that it gets wide and shallow right after being narrow and deep. This creates basically a rapid that is consistent from bank to bank as some of the water stalls when it hits the edge of the shallow area and the rest of the water floods forward. This happens also in nature when there is a large rock just under the water in a river. In fact I have been on rafting trips where we let some air out of the tubes of the raft and surfed the river. But that was 5 people in a raft.

In Munich we actually saw people with different size surf boards jump in the river, land on their surf board and surf for anywhere from a couple of seconds to a few minutes. The only kind of board I didn’t see was a long board, but I think the rest were probably represented. It was insane to watch. In fact from what I am told there always a crowd there watching these river surfers. The best by far was actually a kid about 15 years old he could easily stay in there for 10 or minutes. Most surfers lost it on entry, the rest generally could only do it for a few minutes, but the best actually did tricks as they surfed. I can honestly say that I was amazed and totally surprised to see this in the middle of Germany. And there was no Kenue Reeves, though now I know he didn’t show us everything about surfing.