Munich’s beloved urban surf spot, the Eisbachwelle, is dead. Killed not by climate change or capitalism, but by an overachieving municipal cleanup crew with a dredger and apparently no chill.
“And it’s very sad the wave is not working,” says Netzer, staring at where the wave once regularly appeared, just below a bridge that marks the entrance to the city’s English Garden.
In early November, as city engineers finished dredging the bottom of the Eisbach — a two-kilometer-long (1.2-mile) canal that is a side arm of the Isar River — they opened the floodgates to find the Eisbachwelle, typically a 1.5-meter (4.9 feet) high summit of icy river water, had transformed into a small, nondescript whitewater bump along a raging waterway.
“It’s usually three sections,” says Netzer, who has surfed the Eisbachwelle for years. The wave stretches across all three. “On the far side, you jump in and there are these bumps, and then in the middle, you have a nice, smoother place where you can surf, but it’s not easy, because you have to anticipate the sections and know where to make the turns.”
I have spent hours watching surfers getting stoked on the fantastic wave that is no more. I was shocked the first time I happened upon it on a business trip to Munich, and it became a favorite spot for me. What a shame!
This sounds like a job for some nocturnal surf-adjacent engineering with some sacks of underwater concrete.