Trabi Stunt

This movie gets a lot of play 'round these parts ("East overtakes West"), I would just like to point out that the stunt driver there is yours truly.

Trabi goes to Krakow

It's been about 6 months since Cliff and I took our journey to Krakow in the Trabi. After that adventure I managed to write a post about the car, but not about going to Krakow. Now that last weekend I took it up to Berlin for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, I figure it's a good time to talk about the Krakow trip. If you don't know about the Trabi, read the post linked above. One thing that was clear to Cliff and I after we got the Trabi was that it needed to be taken on a road trip. This idea was met with great bewilderment and skepticism by most. Their next comment was either "WHY would you want to take that thing on a long trip?" or "There's NO WAY that thing will make a trip like that." The answer to the first question is much the same as that to those that asked why we would even want to own/drive a Trabi at all: If you have to ask, it's not even worth trying to explain it to you.

Part of our motivation for the trip was just to silence all the haters. People seem to have forgotten that this was almost the only car that anybody owned here 25 years ago, and believe it or not, they did go on long vacations. And survived. And so it was that Cliff an I decided to take it for a weekend to Krakow, where neither of us had been before. It's about a 500km trip each way - doable in a day. bust just barely. You can't be in a rush with a Trabi. Gotta take it easy and enjoy the ride. Notice how we are passed as if standing still:

Aside from some bad traffic and construction, the trip there went pretty smoothly. We made it to Krakow before dark, which was about our goal. When you drive a Trabi around in Dresden, nobody really cares. There's a relative abundance of them here. Chances are if you drive around for 15 minutes in Dresden, you will see one. This is not the case elsewhere. like Poland. People were freaking out a bit when they would see us. Wherever we stopped, cameras came out. Cars would even pass us on the highway with their cameras snapping away. I guess it IS pretty rare to see one out on the highway or autobahn. After all, WHY would anybody take one of these things on a long trip?

When we got to the hostel we asked the guy there where would could park our car that would be relatively safe. He called up a pay lot around the corner and told them we were coming. He asked us what we were driving and when we replied "A beige Trabi" he got pretty excited in a very Eastern European accent exclaimed, "AHHHH!! A TRABANT!!" respect. By the way, this was maybe the best hostel I've ever stayed at, so check it out if you're in Krakow: Mundo Hostel very chill, very clean, very cheap, perfect location.

Krakow itself was also a pleasant surprise, even though we were only there for a couple of days. We cruised around and checked out the nightlife in the evening, took in the historic tourist sites during the day. The first night we were out we were looking for a late-night bite to eat, and came upon a small building where there were multiple lines of people buying some sort of take-away food. We thought it would be a pretty good bet to get in the longest line to get some authentic Polish grub. It turns out what we were waiting in line for was Zapiekanka. It looked like a french bread pizza from far away, but upon biting into it was a totally different flavor experience, hard to describe even. It was like some sort of cooked squash or mushroom, covered with some cheese, then topped off with a little salami, some pickles, and some sort of sweet tabasco/ketchup-like sauce (but not really spicy) Little did we know this is a pretty famous snack at a pretty famous spot (found out the next day on a tour). So that was a win. The next day we went for another Polish classic: Pierogi. We ate at a place recommended to us that basically only served Pierogi, and we got a sample platter with out 12 different kinds.... Mmmmm.

We also decided it would be appropriate, since we came in the Trabi, to make a voyage out to the socialist realist city, Nowa Huta. This was one of the few cities actually planned and designed from the ground up to fit to the socialist ideal. They actually have a popular tour you can take of Nowa Huta in a real life Trabi for 40 euros. Here we are with our own Trabi in front of the Steel Works just outside the city. There was actually a funny moment in the hostel the next morning. We were talking with some other guests, mostly Polish and German, a bit about communist architeture and society. They seemed to think there were better ways to spend our time than visiting Nowa Huta, we thought it seemed interesting. We explained we were from Dresden, where you also see a lot of it. Like most people, they were bewildered that we came from Dresden in a Trabi. In talking about Dresden, Cliff starting relaying his feelings on how East Germans seem in general more friendly than in the West, more casual, more family oriented, and maybe this was from being brought up in a socialist state. The others sort of anxiously disagreed, kind of taken aback that at the suggestion that anything good could have resulted. And then Cliff starts talking about how nice Nowa Huta was, with the large green areas, and that it was well designed and may have been a nice place to live, from a physical standpoint. And I could see these guys thinking "Americans, come over to live in the former East Germany for some reason, buy a Trabant, drive the damn thing all the way to Nowa Huta, and are here telling us how great socialism is???" I wanted to then be like "so what do you guys know about the modern communist party? maybe you would like to take some of these flyers here....." cause that's where it seemed like it was going.

The way back much more more eventful than coming. For starters, we stopped on the way and took a long tour of Auschwitz, which was basically beyond words to describe. Sort of mind- and body-numbing. I think anybody should really go there, but you will be a zombie for a day in disbelief and reflection and just walking on the same grounds, the same train tracks, the same buildings......

One of the quirks of the Trabi is that there is no gas gauge. Basically you have a reserve 'tank', that you kick over to when you run out of gas, and then go fill up. Once you hit the reserve, you have about 4-5 liters (just over a gallon) of gas left. Well, we were cruising our way back and hit the reserve, as we always do, and looked for the next gas station. And looked. and waited. and 30 miles later, still no sign. Finally we saw a sign for gas in a few kilometers, but knew it was gonna be a close one. Well, we didn't make it. We came to a stop in front of a sign signalling 1 km to gas. And so we had to walk to the station for gas.

And then to top off the adventure we kinda made a wrong turn coming back into Germany and added a couple extra hours onto our trip home. This also meant driving in the middle of the night, tired, and trying to navigate our way on country roads through little German towns. I guess it was inevitable that we were gonna get flashed. We managed to each pick up a ticket within about an hour, crusing through these little towns, where nobody is out, but they've changed the speed limit from 80 to 50 or whatever for half a kilometer and put a box there:

(click to enlarge)

good times.

The Trabi

My blogging has slowed down considerably recently. Other than the last post, I had one post of a youtube video in the last 2 months. Unfortunately, nobody complained. Nevertheless, I will push on. Again, in the spirit of documenting my experiences as I go. And it may be long-winded. I still actually need to finish posting on my Africa trip, which is now over a year old. But this first. For those that don't know, last year I was part of an effort among friends/colleagues to acquire a Trabant 601. This is the Trabant, also known as a Trabi:

This is ours, and as you see it has a custom logo on the side. More on that in a minute.
At first this was going to be a post about an epic trip from Dresden to Krakow in the Trabi, but then I realized I should just start with a post about the Trabi itself, and get to Krakow another time.

The Trabant is basically the car of the DDR (GDR/former East germany). This was far and away the most common car in East Germany, and it was made not far from Dresden. I don't know the numbers, but judging by photographs I would say 90% of the cars on the roads during the time were a Trabi. Google 'Trabi" or "Trabant" to learn more about it. It was not built to appeal to customers. It was almost the only choice, and most had to wait 10-15 years or more to get one. For most of the 30+ years the Trabant was in production, it was more or less the exact same model, the 601, and it basically did not change. A '69 and an '88 Trabant 601 are more or less identical.

Dresden likely has the highest concentration of Trabants anywhere in the world I would say. Perhaps Zwickau has more. I'm not basing that on any stats, but I would be surprised if I was wrong. Drive anywhere in Dresden and you will see a Trabant.

And so, I became very curious about this fascinating tiny little car. They even have "Trabi Safaris", tours where for a price you can get behind the wheel of real Trabi and drive with other customers around Dresden. I never had any plans to have a car while in Germany, but I thought if I ever did, it would be fun to get a Trabi. But that was about the extent of it for years, just thinking about it. Then a couple years ago this fellow Cliff shows up in the lab. One of the first things he does after arriving in Germany is to buy a 70s-era BMW motorcycle. interesting. We get to talking and I say how I've always dreamed of having a Trabi, and we toss around the idea of buying one, maybe to share between a few people, and also to tinker around with.

Search the German Ebay for Trabant and you will see dozens of old Trabis for sale - almost all under 1000 euros. This was promising. But between Cliff and I we just didn't have the activation energy to pull the trigger. He had just invested in a new motorcycle, and I was thinking the German bureaucracy involved in purchasing, owning, registering, etc a new car was pretty daunting. As I said, we had thought of maybe getting a few guys to go in together on it. And then it occurred that maybe the coworkers in our lab would get a kick out of it. We approached our boss, Tony, with the idea of a "lab Trabi". Tony was instantly on board, and quite excited about the proposition. Within minutes he was on the phone with his local mechanic, inquiring into where and how the best way to get a respectable Trabi around here was. And before we knew it, the three of us were out looking at Trabis.

In the end, Tony was so game on the idea of a lab Trabi, that we worked out a deal. Tony would buy the Trabi and pay the initial expenses to get it running smoothly. Then everybody else that wanted to drive it would pay for registration, etc, and any repairs or costs that would come up over it's lifetime. A good deal. As it turns out, there's only 4 people that account for 90% of the mileage on the Trabi, and Cliff and I account for about 60%.

Since it's the lab car, we needed a logo. Nate had designed a logo for the lab, a mitotic spindle (the apparatus that divides chromosomes when cells divide, and the focus of most of my research), and so we had in translated into decals made to stick on the car. It actually turned out pretty nice, and Cliff, Misho, and I managed to professionally apply it to both sides in a few hours one evening.

There's so much more to tell about the Trabi, I really love the thing. Driving it is quite an experience. For example, there is no gas gauge. There is a stick under the hood with liters marked in it that you stick into the tank. It holds 24 liters (~ 6 gallons). It's a 2-stroke engine, like a motorcycle or a lawnmower, and you mix oil directly with the gas every time you fill up - mix it right into the tank. Top speed (in perfect conditions) is about 110 km/hr (70mph). The gear shift is on the steering column. etc.

We have the "kombi" - kind of the station wagon version of the Trabant 601. Basically instead of a trunk it's a hatchback. And it's functional - perfect for a trip to the gardening store:

Dude, this is awesome.



Official debut Friday......