Trabant Trek - The Book Review
January 19, 2009
Well, I would not in anyway say a particular good book review or indeed a review at all, but certainly some ramblings from someone who has read it! When this book was announced last year I put my name down with Amazon straight away and just seconds before christmas it arrived. It has been one of those books you don’t want to put down, easy to read, always wanting to read the next bit, and something I will no doubt re-read again sometime.
The amazing trip of Germany to Cambodia is something, not so much because they choose Trabants to drive but more because they choose a collection of cars which really I would doubt would get me the 40 miles to work and back let alone halfway round the world on some of the worlds worst roads! With that and the fact they forgot their maps, had little/no car experience, forgot some essential tools (like a tow rope!), had no firm route, dates, or team… it is really The Wrong Way Round with less planning, well no planning shall we say! You start the book and you are just so cross with these people, they want to drive all this distance and yet they don’t know what they are doing or when they are going to do it, it feels they just woke, picked up a Trabant and off they went thinking they just need to head East. But that is no critisim and it is really what I beleive makes up such a great trip and such a great read.
They pick up their Trabants which are really not fit for the road let alone the roads they will encounter. The batteries are dead, they are not charing, the door locks don’t work, the wheels are seized. Amazingly they don’t let these small things stop them, even if they start braking down while still on German roads. It is only when they just come across a brakedown that needs a tow that they discover they didn’t think of packing such an item, so the seatbelts are stripped out and make shift tow ropes are make. This tow ropes are to be used a lot and last until the end of the journey. They meet up a couple of times with Trabant clubs on their way through some of the ex Soviet countries and the impression these clubs give is that they will never make it. These then are Trabant experts telling them they should give up before they get too far. But who beleives them, Trabant Trek has one person on the team that knows a little about things, so all is good.
So you read and you scorn these mad people and think they deserve all they get and come across. You may think they give Trabants a bad name as their break downs have little to do with the fact they are running Trabants but more to do with they are running knackered Trabants with little planning and knowledge. Well, in the early days this is true (although the planning never really gets much bettter), they soon learn their way around a Trabant and tricks to get it going. A pity then about their support car. Again, a knackered cheap car, a Mercedies that finally gets dumped on the Afgan border while the three knackered Trabants keep going.
As a Trabant person I was of course looking for all bits Trabant, although I do too enjoy reading about trips and espically ones that are slightly different like this one. I was dissappointed that there was not too much Trabant only type stuff, although the author does say at the start he was not mechnalically minded; although by the end I think he knew what he was doing quite a bit. The whole book is not so much about Trabants, not so much either about Trabant Trek as a whole, but more about his journey. He talks about the other team members but no other team member contributes, which is definatly shown as through all the disorganisation of the trip tempers were lost, freindships made and broken.
More Trabant realted writing would have had made it of further interest to myself and the other 100 to 200 people in the UK with similar interest, but this is really a travel book. The book talks about the breakdowns but little about them. Some of them you can diagnose by reading the book although you never get the chance to know if you were right or not as it doesn’t go into detail. What does come across is that these cars were played about with a lot to get them to their final destination. One car was lost (I wonder if the big end bearing went?), or shall I say one engine was lost. They then decided out of the 3 cars (remember that the support car had been ditched) was be the best one to ditch and after doing so transfered the various parts to make one “super car” and took whatever spares they could from the worst car.
Apart from being a fantastic read, a great log of one person during this amazing trip (and with all the disorganisation and lack of maps, and money a lot of the time) it really is a true travellers log. This is true travelling which gets lost a lot these days with GPS, satelitte phone and a whole multi million pound support crew following behind you. I am biased, I read the book due to its Trabant link and while I was initially annoyed by these people going unprepared in cars that were not fit for any road as they were giving a bad impression of these cars. Sure, they are rough cars, not up to modern day standards (although will happly sit at 100kph and more, they were recommnded not to go above 60kph by a Trabant “expert” ) but the journey shows what these cars are made of. Certainly they broke down a lot, some because they were knackered cars in the first place and others because they were travalling the worlds worst roads (used loosly at times it would seen). But they got there, locals were able to fix things, they were able to fix things, people who had little car or Trabant experience. The book talks about braking down in places that are so remote on the planet that you wonder how they got things going again. These cars then, and the people undertook the journy are true travlers, the people made it, the cars made it - one their own.
Well done team, well done Trabants!
For Trabant nuts there is not a great deal to get you going on its own, but if you love the idea of Trabants or if you love travellers journels, or if you love the two - then you will love this informally and well written book!. £9.49 from Amazon
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