Day 17: Surfing in Munich

Let's get this clear right off the bat, I did not go surfing. I didn't bring a surfboard or any other surfing materials. I just found some surfers. Still pretty cool, especially when you consider how far from the ocean Munich is.

I'll get to how it's possible.

This morning I woke up with a loose plan to explore the city, essentially going into more detail from yesterday's walking tour. The first place I went to was a church that stuck out in my mind. Outside this church was a small 3D replica of Munich. I thought this was very interesting to look at, so I came back to it today to get a better look. Afterwards I went into the church to see what it was all about.

That's when I realized, I didn't want to spend today inside churches and museums. Partly because everything in the church was in German, and partly because there were other things I could do.

Something I remembered from the walking tour was the English Gardens. We didn't visit them on the tour because it was a somewhat rainy cloudy day, but today was looking much better. So I found my way to the park and started walking.

I had no idea how huge the park was when I started, but it ended up taking about four hours to explore, and I didn't even really see all of it. Right from the beginning there was a river running through the park and I decided to follow it. There were plenty of bridges running over it and I stopped at each one to watch the water go by. At first it was so fast I could hardly believe it. Other times it slowed down. Sometimes it was wide, sometimes it was skinny. You know how rivers are.

I had heard about surfing in Munich once before, but it still caught me by surprise. After walking for maybe an hour along the river, I found them. Someone had put some adjustments into the river bed to make a constant wave at one point on the river, and along the side, there was a line of surfers waiting there turn to jump in.

There were nine surfers each taking turns on the wave, with more showing up every few minutes. A lot of people had stopped to watch, and some of he surfers were actually pretty good. I watched for at least half an hour. Lesson for the day: surfing does not require an ocean.

I continued around the park, eventually reaching a lake that had so many geese and ducks it was rivaling the amount of people. I walked around the lake and sat down to read for a while. Around 6:30 I started to head back to the city. I didn't want to be caught in the park at night, and I wanted to eat dinner before it got too late too.

The garden was a great change from the city, even though it was only a few days ago that I was resting comfortably beside Lake Zurich. Maybe I should take note of this in the future. When I have the option of city or nature, nature is almost always the best option. At least for me personally.

Tonight I am trying to get some laundry done. It's finally that time again. Fortunately the hostel has laundry machines on my floor. Unfortunately, they were all in use last I checked. I'll probably check again after I finish writing this, but there's always tomorrow too. After the castle of course.

That's the plan for tomorrow, tour a castle. It's hard to go wrong with castles. I'll probably have some good photos of that to look forward to.

So until then, thanks for reading and here's to tomorrow.

And remember, you don't need to live on the coast to go surfing. That can be taken literally, or metaphorically, whichever you choose.