JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Surfers in Germany are not stoked about the disappearance of a popular inland surfing spot, a wave that formed along a river in Munich, Germany. A couple weeks ago, the wave vanished after a city dredging project. Now the community is uniting to get it back. NPR's Rob Schmitz has this report. And a warning, there is surfer lingo in his story that might be, like, a total buzzkill.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: At first, they were like, dude? And then they were like, dude. Munich surfers had lost their ride.
JAKOB NETZER: It's very sad that the wave is not working.
SCHMITZ: Standing by what used to be his wave, surfer Jakob Netzer (ph) is bummed.
NETZER: People really are missing it because surfing is a lifestyle.
SCHMITZ: Munich's wave, the Eisbachwelle, is a natural river swell, a 5-foot-high summit of water along a raging stream that bisects the city's largest park. Netzer calls the wave gnarly, dangerous. And before it disappeared, only the most experienced surfers dared to take it on.
NETZER: The first time I was surfing the wave was when I was 17. I was working in a bar, and one of my bar colleagues (laughter) took me to go on the wave in the middle of the night after our shift.
SCHMITZ: And why did you think that was a good idea, to come out here to the most dangerous river surfing spot and try and do it in the middle of the night?
NETZER: Actually, I didn't think much about it. I don't know. We just did it.
(SOUNDBITE OF DICK DALE AND HIS DEL-TONES' "MISIRLOU")
SCHMITZ: Netzer wiped out and nearly drowned. But his throw-all-caution-to-the-wind approach is the foundation of surfing. But a river wave may not always be there for you. And on November 2, the raucous and brash surfing culture of Munich went 60 to zero, or from a Dick Dale surfing scorcher to a somber sonata from Germany's favorite composer overnight.
(SOUNDBITE OF LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN'S "PIANO SONATA NO. 14")
SCHMITZ: Last month, city engineers lowered the river and dredged it of any potential danger spots and sediment, says fellow surfer Alexander Neumann. When the engineers reopened the floodgates, the wave was gone. In its place, a foamy, unsurfably lame stretch of white water. Neumann says surfer social media groups lit up in horror. Surf is down, dudes.
ALEXANDER NEUMANN: They took a bit too much out which used to lay on the ground of the wave. And the wave is not forming properly now. That's our problem.
(SOUNDBITE OF LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN'S "PIANO SONATA NO. 14")
SCHMITZ: Neumann, of the Munich River Surfers Association, stands at the riverside staring blankly at where the wave used to be.
NEUMANN: It's a white water wash now because, as you can see, the water that's coming out from the two channels, it's not finding any resistance after because it's going down. And then you have the backwater that's coming. So that's why it's breaking in itself.
(SOUNDBITE OF LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN'S "PIANO SONATA NO. 14")
SCHMITZ: Just upstream, a team of engineers and a hydrologist hired from Hamburg tinker with GPS and sonar equipment they're attaching to a boogie board. The city, it appears, is addressing an engineering mishap by throwing more engineers at it - a German solution to a German problem.
MARKUS DISSE: They did their job too good (laughter).
SCHMITZ: Hydrologist Markus Disse teaches down the street at the Technical University of Munich. He suggests the city instead experiment with the flow of the water while replacing some of the sediment to resurrect the wave. He opens a hydrology book to a page on fluid mechanics to explain what's called the Froude number.
DISSE: I can give you the formula if you like.
(SOUNDBITE OF LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN'S "PIANO SONATA NO. 14")
SCHMITZ: Dude, no.
DISSE: So velocity divided by square root of gravity constant times the water height.
SCHMITZ: And if, he says, the city adds sediment and increases the velocity of the water, then the Froude number increases and the height of the wave should, too.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER FLOWING)
SCHMITZ: All this hydrological engineering talk made Munich surfers impatient, though. A week after the wave vanished, they MacGyvered an underwater ramp and secretly installed it where the wave used to be, and voila, the wave came back.
(SOUNDBITE OF DICK DALE AND HIS DEL-TONES' "MISIRLOU")
SCHMITZ: Yes, it was illegal, and yes, the city was not happy about the stunt, and it was removed. But for a day or two, surfers were again riding the Eisbachwelle, where the surf was back up, dude.
Rob Schmitz, NPR News, Munich.
(SOUNDBITE OF DICK DALE AND HIS DEL-TONES' "MISIRLOU") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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