German surfers abandon efforts to reanimate fabled Munich river wave

"I could have fixed it within weeks, with very little funding. But the city told me they didn't need me."

Horror struck southern Germany’s robust surfing community, this past October, and though there was hope it would all get sorted, herrs and fräuleins are forced to enter the new year with no Munich Eisbach and only the dimmest possibility of the Ice Creek ever returning full stop.

But you certainly recall when a routine cleaning of the waterway that forms up the most famous standing wave in the world accidentally turned the thing off? Surfing Münchners thought it a real problem but a solvable one as the phenomenon was man-created to begin with.

Yes, the legend of Walter Strasser is known far and wide. That German had watched when a 1970s engineering project on the li’l brook funneled water through a particular bend particularly ferociously. He placed a plank at a certain angle et voila, The Eisbach was born.

Over the years, the set-up was improved, world-renowned visitors stopping by to get their shred on.

Alas, and again, she disappeared in October, though Surf Club Munich went to work lobbying the local government for a fix. Days ago, however, the effort was abandoned, SCM releasing a statement explaining, “The administration does not want to regulate surfing on the Eisbach, but to prevent it.”

Strasser, himself, told a local newspaper, “I have so much experience with the Eisbach. I know exactly what the problem is. I could have fixed it within weeks, with very little funding. But the city told me they didn’t need me.”

Though hope seems lost, Surf Club Munich dropping its study to see how to reanimate the wave, it maintained the debate would continue despite it “becoming political.

Just what this world needs. More debate.

Though have you ever had the privilege of visiting German Rome? I have, twice. The first time during Octoberfest, in the late 1990s, wherein I drank a large maßkrug of beer and ate a large plate of meat in a festive tent then fell asleep on some quaint steps, nearby, only to be awakened by laughing Germans.

The second time when X-Games was in town back in 2013. I remember going to see the Eisbach with my own eyes, that trip, but did not surf it.

A lesson, I suppose, to never put off until tomorrow what can be done today.