Munich's beloved urban surf spot, the Eisbachwelle, is dead. Killed not by climate change or capitalism, but by an overachieving municipal cleanup crew with a dredger and apparently no chill.

"And it's very sad the wave is not working," says Netzer, staring at where the wave once regularly appeared, just below a bridge that marks the entrance to the city's English Garden.

In early November, as city engineers finished dredging the bottom of the Eisbach — a two-kilometer-long (1.2-mile) canal that is a side arm of the Isar River — they opened the floodgates to find the Eisbachwelle, typically a 1.5-meter (4.9 feet) high summit of icy river water, had transformed into a small, nondescript whitewater bump along a raging waterway.

"It's usually three sections," says Netzer, who has surfed th

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