The spray splashes up, the freestyle board shoots into the air and Flo jumps an impressive front loop into the sky. And all this more than 400 kilometres away from the nearest wave spot. Just outside Leipzig. When Florian Kellner (26) was born, huge excavators were still ploughing up the landscape here. What was once a curse has now become a blessing: After 150 years of mining, the coal mines are being flooded and an impressive water landscape is being created around the old trade fair city, consisting of 20 lakes with a combined area of 70 square kilometres, known as "Neuseenland". This has given rise to a windsurfing scene that is now one of the largest in inland Germany and whose infrastructure is likely to make even coastal surfers envious.
There are good conditions for intermediates here almost every day - there is always a bit of wind and several surf and rental centres have now established themselves in the region. On good days, when the foam crests are white, the wind waves build up to a metre and the sandstorm whips across the north beach, Flo sometimes has to share his 436-hectare spot with over a hundred surfers and kiters. "But there's rarely any stress because the kiters have their access point a little further away, so you hardly ever get in each other's way," he says. Cospuden has a large wind range. Flo: "Apart from easterly winds, everything works." And when it blows from the east, the caravan moves a few kilometres further to neighbouring Lake Markkleeberg, which, unlike Cospuden, is undeveloped on the eastern shore.
You can read the entire report on Lake Copuden below as a PDF download.
