Eisbachwelle

Sleek black seals slipped in and out of the river channel Eisbach. They dove into the rushing water and then flopped back onto land, over and over again, only sometimes resting on the cement banks long enough to bask in the early spring sunshine. They excitedly communicated to each other in a tongue I couldn’t understand.

They were German seals.

Actually, they were German surfers.

And for that reason, their mid-surf storytelling and audible chuckling evaded me. Who knew what they were talking about? Who ever really knows what watery creatures discuss out there in the swirling foam? I watched. I strolled in from the far left path in the park (English Garden, Munich) and approached a posse as they waited their turn on the wave.

Truth is, they didn’t dive quite like seals. The surfers jumped from the concrete ledge, gripping their short boards beneath their feet, landing with bended knees right as a murky, barely-there barrel formed. They surfed one by one, gliding left to right and right to left for many minutes before losing their balance, or before purposefully falling back to let the next young pup go. I stood for a little while, watching them. And then I walked on to the bridge overhead and followed their swift turns from above; I watched and I watched.

Whereas I had just been a spectator peering from behind a cluster of nearly 6 ft tall male surfers with sloppy, wet hair (in fact, one with snowy white hair), I now stared down as a teenage boy and girl arrived on the scene, boards in tow.

The girl, hardly 18 by appearance, took on the thick wall of rushing water with absurdly natural ease.

Very rarely did the members of this motley crew perform poorly or appear frustrated. Rather, they repeatedly clapped and hollered and offered clear affirmation of the efforts of every new-comer. They lifted their wet-suited flippers and seemed to take on the gnarly flow of water with determined, communal energy. They lifted their wet-suited flippers with infectious pleasure.

I wondered if any of them knew each other prior to this surf session, or if the interactions occurring in front of me were spontaneous—accidental camaraderie born of shared interest, shared ability even.

I’m not sure how to name whatever it was that so connected these otherwise random surfers to each other, and them to I. What can be concluded is this: those German surfers tamed the truly wild Eisbach that day in the gardens. Among a multitude of other onlookers, I witnessed what could just as easily be called mastery—though I think that distorts who (or what) really maintained power when the boards were eventually spat out of the current.

The longer I observed, the more a strange feeling began to well up in me. I had transcended the limited frame of my little Nikon, and somehow felt that I was right there in the water alongside them. I felt, honestly, that the spoken language and the mystical fluidity of these surfing people did not pose an impossibility. Perhaps I knew what was being said all along.