In every beginning there is wonder, but also banality and stupidity. It’s all too easy to reflect on what you’re doing and lose faith. You’re just another idiot trying to balance on a board. Why?

The first time I tried I lost the board and fell almost as soon as I tried to get on it. Better next time, move towards the middle, fall again. This is how it goes for everyone.

Style emerges from the first moment. Are you stiff, do you flail, do you grimace, or smile? You meet people and then you watch them surf and then you see them again and how they surf is part of the impression. The lady with short black hair, wizened face (J.): stability. A stable entry, and then smooth from one end to the next. She her arms behind her back to practice. I told her that I admired her style: stable, smooth and that I’d try to imitate the way she got in, slowly, steadily, getting balanced by the wall before setting off.

Settling down first made a difference. I got to the other side comfortably, but struggled turning back. She gave me advice: Get lower, turn your head more into the direction you want to go. “You turn your head, but then you immediately turn it back.”

Saturday the next week: Pure surf day 14:00-20:00, six hours of surfing. The queue per attempt stabilised at 15 mins.

There was a middle-aged man with pink bathing shorts under his belly who flailed heroically, gradually increasing his time on the wave.

An Austrian who had come from Salzburg where there is also a standing wave. He had shaped his board himself. Unsteady at first, he was one of the best riders in the session, sliding, cutting, jumping, rotating the board.

An earnest and thin 20-year old (P.), bleached hair growing out, replaced by black. He shivers while waiting. He bends very low when he rides. He has surfed at Eisbach, but still enjoys Flosslände. “It’s not as if Eisbach is the grail, it’s all fun.”

A girl who, before the session started, asked everyone she met how long they had been surfing. She was only impressed with answers reporting an experience above three years. So young, so snobbish. She rode out into the wave slowly, enjoying the fact of an audience, her mother filming her.

A tallish (well, taller than me), black-haired, wet-suited man, wearing neoprene boots. Professional-looking but quick to fall. We spoke English. He said he was planning to go surfing at the Eisbach at 4 am the next morning. This was his practice session. We agreed on how grand it was to be able to think about surfing in the middle of a city. He said that in a way it was comparable to living in Istanbul and swimming in the Bosporus, which he had done. He told me about an episode from the “Huberman Lab Podcast” featuring the theory that surfing is addictive because the brain likes forward momentum coupled with the tilting of the head and body.

I’m most impressed by a heavy-set and unhealthy looking man who vapes when he doesn’t surf. He surfs back and forth, the water doesn’t touch him. He doesn’t fall, he just returns to the side and gets back out and begins vaping again. He goes to the end of the queue where I happen to be standing and tells me he’ll be back later. Then he leaves in a cloud of vape-smoke.

At about 4 or 5 pm, queuing 15 mins for a 20 sec ride seemed like a silly idea. J. had been taking a break and re-joined the queue. I remarked on how it was all a bit silly in a way. “But everyone’s here for the same reason, everyone has the same interest, passion,” she said. Yes! But still, I thought about going home. I left the queue and went for a little walk. It didn’t take long and I was back. The queuing was a practice too, you could watch people improving, having fun. You could distinguish between those who were annoyed after falling, those who seemed embarrassed, those who doubled down in their determination… but everyone was having fun. It’s good to slow down, sometimes. The moment you get is more valuable as a result.