(gentle electronic music) – Hello. Thank you for joining us on our quest to find the
weirdest waves in the world. Fuck, I'm–
(beeping) – I still loved it. I was still there. – (laughs) They were coming
by with pizza anyways. – Oh, god. Cowabunga. (gentle electronic music) – What I was trying to say is that these may very well be the weirdest waves of our lives. So naturally we had to
come to the birthplace of stand up river surfing, Munich, Germany, to pay homage. Add my good friend Tanner Gudauskas and Basque Country's finest
miniature gentleman Keoni Lassa join me to meet up with
local pro Tao Schirrmacher to give us the scoop on
this legendary surf arena. (bright electronic music) How do you know whose
turn it is, when you go… So one and one, whoever, and you just wait in line to get out – Yeah.
– And wait in this line? So what's the time limit
then for being on the wave? So you, if someone's taking a long time you jump on the wave? So you're like, okay, you're done.
It's my turn.
– Yeah. – Coming in.
(laughing) So there's localism. (laughing) Meet Tao,
(gentle electronic music) local hero and river
surfing extraordinaire. Tao was the first person to land a 360 shove-it on a surfboard. I first heard of Tao after he
won an online video contest for a video he shot with
his friends, FUS Crew. Check it out if you get
a chance; it's insane. I recently learned Tao
has his own website, lostndrowned.com, where he posts treasures he's found diving in the river. (bright electronic music) Tao is extremely impressive to watch. He's able to create speed out of nowhere and pop his board up like
no one I've ever seen. He also seems to be kingpin
here at the Eisbach, so I was pumped to have
him help dial us in on what looked like a
tight and tricky setup.
What do you think about this fin setup? It's big?
– Yeah (mumbles) – Should I take this for a smaller fin? I have one. Yeah? Show me the step off. (yelling)
(gentle electronic music) Tao made that look way too easy. Compared to other river waves I've surfed, the Eisbach was a lot more disorienting. With way more bumps in
the wave and smaller area, it took us a good hour
to find our river legs. Tao suggested we try jumping
in on the other side. He thought it might be easier. So tricky. (laughs) It feels really tight and almost a little claustrophobic 'cause you're kind of in
between these two walls. But totally sick. – Honestly, it looks like the funnest wave when he is surfing it. It's like, oh, a little right,
little left, here we go. And with the grab rail. Puts a little schnitzel on it. With the schnitzel in,
bingo, layback, how's that? Spray check. What? Party. Still going, back side of the river. What else do you want? Like, it's gonna happen right here. This is ridiculous. Kick out. That's how gentlemen ride.
– '86, the biggest
crews started happening. Quirin was there, was
surfing at the moment. He was 15 with his bodyboard. We convinced him to surf. After half a year he was
better than everybody. – [Dylan] Quirin was a smooth operator in or out of the water,
and just a really nice guy. He straight up bro'd
Keoni into his first wave then threw on his suit and
was flowing effortlessly back and forth on the wave. Having surfed the river for over 30 years, Tanner got a chance to
catch up with this warlock and break it all down. – I mean, it's a great,
great opportunity, you know? You live in the middle of Germany or Europe, pretty much, you
know, there's no ocean around and you can suit up pretty
much every day you want and go for a surf.
I mean, it's not the ocean but it comes close. – Has there been a lot of people starting to surf here in Munich? – It attracts a crazy and a weird crowd. There's so many different people, you know, there's kids, there's students, there's doctors, there's
all sorts of people. So it's a good crew. It gets very crowded at times, you know, it gets a bit tense at times. – (laughs) Yes. – You know, there's the
locals jumping the line and then there's new people coming and they're asking, why
is he jumping the line? It's like, dude, yeah, well,
'cause he's surfing here for like 25 years, he doesn't understand. But all in all, it's all good. – Has there ever been a
time of a localism era, or even just like, packs of
dudes that were kind of gnarly? – Yeah, we used to have one guy, I mean, I think he's pretty famous. He was the one telling Kelly Slater that he can't surf the wave.
(Tanner laughs) He would be like, we
called him the Hausmeister, which is like the caretaker of the house.
