Trabant Treffen, Zwickau, Germany, June 15-18, 2007

Sunday, Day Three: The Invisible Treffen
I woke up and it was gone. We were just four weirdos sleeping in a field.
Everything had been vanished away leaving just the acid residue of 70,000 piss artists – their signatures etched deep into the earth, human slug trails crisscrossing the morass, marking lay lines of Trabbi destruction.
The booze tent was still serving, the last hangers on swigging frothy German lager from grimy plastic cups, shuffling their beer tokens nervously; chancers waiting for the last act to play out.
Even the sausage stalls were shutting up. The smell of barbecued meat ghosting through the breeze meeting the muddy fetid pang of the slime and congealing on the back of the nostrils.
The blue haze of diesel smog stinging the back of the throat with every lungful of noxious fumes.

Day One, Friday: The Flood
The Treffen has been held in Zwickau for each of the last 14 years. A forum for enthusiasts to exchange parts, flash their modifications, immerse themselves in Trabbi culture and consume heroic levels of booze. The first Trabant rolled off the production line in 1957, so this year was the 50th anniversary and an excuse for even more of a party.

Every conceivable modification was on show, peacocks flashing their plumage
- stretch Trabbis, jeep Trabbis, lowered Trabbis set on alloys with tinted windows and chrome rims. Some had one-litre engines, some had no engines.
One was turned into a trike, another into a boat, one Trabbi chassis was mounted on a 4x4 frame, others had tents on their roofs. Most had four wheels, a few had six wheels.
My personal favourite had a garden table and benches mounted on its roof. Six large German men sat atop the vehicle spilling lager onto passers by and jeering in Teutonic unison.

We got the tent up just as the heavens opened – a storm straight out of a
King horror. Forked tongues sliced through the sky echoed by the steady murmur of rolling thunder.
A small sea rained onto the campsite turning everything to muck. We'd cleverly camped in the bed of a natural gully and as the field saturated a stream formed and began to flow through the tent, washing grass, litter and insects into our new home.
We used beer crates as stools and sat close together, wet and shivering but happy in the gloom.

There were different approaches to tackling the conditions. Daintier folk tiptoed around the slurry seeking sure footing on sturdy ground. Others embraced the muck, crawling and swimming through it, smeared head to toe.
We Trekkers resigned to the filth, wading barefoot without forethought, at the mercy of the mud. The decision left my feet a bruised, chipped, scraped mess. But saved my shoes.

Recollections from that first night are few and fragmented. A gaping mental chasm from meeting the Jagermeister people, who sold devil's brew by the test tube, to waking up encrusted with dried mud, blood and urine- head pounding throat dry, suffocating in the clammy heat of the tent.
My memory may have done me a favour. According to fellow trekkers I was doing summersaults into strangers with my trousers around my ankles.
I didn't know I could do somersaults.

Saturday, Day Two: The Trabant 601 Lovejoy Model
The second day the drinking was paced better. A steady flow of beer and
Jagermeister releasing me from inhibitions, letting me ruin reputation and dignity but retain memory.

At the Treffen you're either an owner or a spectator.
The first group take every opportunity to parade their vehicles, revving, sliding and skidding along the catwalk in their pimped up TransTrabantuals- mutant vehicles from sideways minds.
The second group sit back, drink heavily and watch the procession, pointing, laughing, shouting and helping to push Trabbis stuck in the swamp.
The air was thick with blue engine smoke, ratcheting two strokes and thick-necked German folk.

We handed fliers to everyone, and communicated in an invented German tongue that few understood. Most expressed the universal sound for 'that'll never work' and laughed, before toasting or tutting us, depending on their character.

The boozing was constant, relentless and attacked with the stoic efficiency you'd expect of the Krauts. Man, woman and child hitting the slosh with aggressive aplomb.
As day turned to night a saucer-eyed skinhead calling himself Kandy offered us a free roof rack. For a few hours I believed him, despite the multiple
piercings, language barrier and his addiction to a hideous snorting sound, he was fair company.
But then, as he stared transfixed by his own reflection in a pool of beer, a moment of clarity– the man was clearly deluded, and possibly dangerously deranged, we'd never see this roof rack.

So we moved to the dance floor. A Europop festival of twisted jesters, drawn together by a strange enthusiasm for plastic cars. Common ground for everyone, an umbilical link and source of mutual respect, friendship, even love standing in the throng dilated as the rest. We stood and absorbed the aura of thousands of revellers united by a single purpose.

Then the fighting started.

I couldn't tell you who threw the first punch, but I saw a short angry
David run into the arena with a look of grim purpose. He approached a
Goliath of a man, wearing leathers and a beard, and cracked him round the back of the head. The giant was momentarily stunned, then lashed out. Cue chaos as bystanders got caught in the melee and doormen bounced in to pull apart the thrashing, spitting mass - drinks and limbs colliding as warriors slipped in the ring.

It marked a turning point in the dance tent, and we headed off to find adventure elsewhere. The campsite was littered with small pockets of drunks staring into barbecues and fires, guarding the diminishing stockpile of warm beer.

The revelry continued till daybreak. I don't remember retiring, but when I opened my eyes Trabant Treffen had disappeared for another year.

Ends
(1,000 words)
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