50 years of the Trabant

The catastrophically bad but legendary East German Trabant car, lovingly dubbed the "soapbox" by Hungarians, has turned 50. Zsigmond Falusy reports that fans celebrated the occasion fittingly. "If only Honecker could have seen this! A GDR flag flapped in the breeze and everywhere there were Trabants and young people sporting GDR T-shirts... But the Trabant is more than a passion. It symbolises Eastern Europe as a whole: our miserable lives, the East Germans' horn combs, the cheating of the Poles, the poverty of the Bulgarians, the plunger pump I once purchased from a group of Soviet tourists, the cheap beer in Prague and the dollars bought on the black market, Kádár, Honecker and Breshnev, Flammkuchen (Alsace pizza) and potato noodles. It's funny and sad at the same time."

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