By Dan
We are now officially Trekking.
Arrived in Zwickau just before midnight Tuesday (24th July 2007) and met our German contact Mike, who will be travelling with us for a few weeks. He’s from Zwickau and, after a few drinks, he showed us to a windswept field where we pitched our budget supermarket tent. After just a night it is showing serious signs of wear and tear which suggest it won’t stand up to a five-month trip.
Waking up and packing up this morning after the first of many nights of camping, we headed off on Trabant Trek - a great feeling after months of planning.
We went with Mike to his mechanics to change the spark plugs and check out a strange noise coming from Fez (the newly named Blue Trabbi). It makes a coughing sound when it’s idling and farted at traffic lights a couple of days ago. As Carles said: “Fez is like a baby – when she farts you must change her nappy, when Fez farts you must change her spark plugs.”
Strange Catalan wisdom.
We couldn’t cure the noise, which is a concern, but hope to get back to Budapest where The Bear can take a look.
Next stop was the Trabant museum, which kindly let us in for a Euro each and allowed us to film for nothing. It was packed with Trabbis and interesting documentary footage, along with a decent explanation of why the Trabbi was made of plastic.
In the Fifties, when the Trabbi was designed, most other car manufacturers were using pressed steel for their panelling. But in East Germany there was a steel shortage – the Soviets were using what they produced for the military, and there was an embargo on importing steel from the West.
So East German scientists set about looking for a replacement material. What they did have was plenty of waste cotton from the textile industry. After a lot of research the clever Krauts worked out how to make rigid but malleable panels out of compressed cotton mixed with polymer resin. The result was Duraplast, made up of 50 layers of cotton and 52% resin - it’s lightweight and doesn’t rust.
The car’s engine hardly evolved from the Fifties right through to the end of the Eighties. The two-stoke, 600cc was pretty much the standard – top speed 80kmph (about 50mph), going from 17bhp in the early cars up to about 26 bhp later on, simple but unreliable.
In Soviet-dominated East Germany spare parts were hard to come by. Most Trabbi owners had a garage full of bits and there was a currency in trading them. The cars were designed to last eight to ten years, but meticulous and innovative owners ensured the average one ran for closer to 30.
The Trabbi became something of a symbol of East German success, a sign that the communist country could compete with the West, and enthusiasts vigorously opposed any attempt to interfere with the classic shape of the car.
In 1973 the millionth Trabant rolled of the production line in Zwickau, largely unchanged form the 1958 original.
It wasn’t until 1990 that the Trabbi finally got a new engine, a 1.1litre four-stroke based on the Volkswagen Polo.
I couldn’t help but think we should have got one of these later versions rather than the eighties models we picked up. They’re significantly faster and more reliable, but would have cost more.
Later in the day we tried to film the original Trabbi factory, which still has the original Trabant “S” logo remains on the building, but got shouted away by security.
We made the short drive in convoy to Dresden where we were put up for free by the kind people at Lily’s Homestay. It’s a great place with dozens of themed rooms – one of the third floor rooms even had a Trabant in it which they had gutted and cut in half to take up the stairs, then reassembled to form a bed. We loved it.
That night we went into town, where we found Marlena behind the counter of a kebab shop knocking out Gyros. Not quite sure how it happened but she seemed to be enjoying herself.
We sat and listened to some Spanish guitar in the street, then returned to collapse.
mrdanmurdoch@gmail.com
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