Interviewed by
Michael Zirnstein
“We’re all the same in front of a wave,” Hawaiian surf pro Jamie O’Brien once said. A Munich engineer, of all people, turns this basic understanding of surfers on its head: Rainer Klimaschewski always builds the same waves on which a wide variety of people surf. Of course, the Munich Eisbach wave provided the inspiration. The company Action Team of the former Olympic trick ski champion has already installed more than a dozen artificial “City Waves” all over the world. The largest of its kind has just opened in Hawaii after two and a half years of construction: a 30-meter roller in a huge surf pool right on Eva Beach near Honolulu in the leisure facility of a Japanese investor. Munich surfing fans don’t even have to get on the plane, there will be a (smaller) City Wave in Regensburg this year from May 1st to October 3rd. That’s the way it’s supposed to be: if the surfers can’t come to the waves, the waves will come to them.