I think my favorite thing in Munich was the English Garden. This former royal hunting ground is a third larger than Central Park and very heavily utilized by locals and visitors alike. It features a variety of interesting attractions including a beer house with a Chinese tower, a Japanese tea house, a lake, a few rivers, beaches, and field space for games.
Pumping in water
It’s is modeled after a traditional English garden (hence the name) and we were told all the plants were imported. The lake and rivers are man made – brought in from the Isar River (Alp run off). Originally the rivers ran much slower than they do today which made for great mosquito breeding grounds but not so lovely gardens. The Germans are great engineers and so they developed a pump system to make the water go faster.
Turns out this pumped up water made a frothy mess when it entered the park and it was great for surfing! Simply attach a rope to the bridge, hop on your board and go! But the Germans are engineers you see so this wasn’t quite good enough. They figured out that you can add a plank which eliminates the froth and the need for the rope and so the rest is history!
Surfing
Surfing in this area was and probably is still is illegal. However, Germany has this thing called the common sense law (disclosure: this Intel came from our American tour guide so take this with grain of salt). As long as something is posted as or is a known danger (think climbing a mountain) and you go ahead and do it anyway, you don’t get to blame anyone other than yourself when something goes wrong. A very intriguing idea if you ask me.
I loved watching the surfers. They lined up along both sides of the wave and took turns jumping in. Personally I consider this a trick all on its own! They’d ride the wave as long as they could doing all sorts of cool tricks (flipping the board around, splashing the waiting surfers, etc.) until they eventually wiped out. Once they wiped out, the next surfer would have a go.
They do this year round mind you. Can you picture a surfer riding her bike through the park carrying a surf board? We saw it a lot. Now, add snow to the picture. That is dedication to your passion!
