At Last, the 1948 Show!

Thanks to Mark for the postcard, which he sent home to his mum!

With no boating, bus riding or anything else to do I've been making great progress on the neverending colour-slide digitisation project.  I recently unearthed a few boxes of slides taken in the 1980s when I made several trips behind the Iron Curtain, as we then referred to eastern Europe. This, together with the chance rediscovery of my diary for one of those trips - one of the few times I've kept a diary in my life - gave me the idea for a short series of blog posts to try and keep you amused during these strange times.

My travelling companion, Mark, had been the year before, but my first trip was in 1984 (not "1948"). The reference in the post title, as well as being to a well-known TV show considered a precursor of Monty Python, comes from something Mark said to a West German border guard as we crossed back over from the east. The Guard asked what we had thought of the DDR.  Mark, recalling the lack of car traffic, the restricted choice of food, the preponderance of people in uniform, the steam trains and the general air of austerity and drabness replied: "It's still 1948 over there", which became a catch phrase for that and future trips.

Our main reason for going was to see some of Europe's last main line steam locomotives in action, but we also had an interest in sampling a different way of life. Back then there was very little information about what life was like in socialist countries and what there was was usually couched in negative terms. Eastern bloc governments told the world that their inhabitants lived in a people's paradise, whereas the view from the west was that they lived in a police state. We just wanted to see for ourselves.
So if you want to know what a couple of  young transport and beer enthusiasts got up to over a week or so in the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) and the People's Republic of Poland in 1984 read on.....

Day One:
Thursday, 19th April 1984
I left my home in Bolton at 10.50 on the number 8 bus to Manchester, then catching the 14.15 train to London. The train left on time and arrived ten minutes early at 16.50 (today's 14.15 train would get you to London 40 minutes faster). I met Mark at Euston and we took the tube to Charring Cross. Mark had forgotten the necessary Polish currency exchange document, without which we couldn't exchange our money for Polish currency, and had to return to his flat in Tooting to get it! (Although it practice it turned out to be completely unnecessary). He was back in time for us to catch the 19.30 train to Folkestone, where we had time for two pints of Shepherd Neame bitter and two of Wethered's before boarding the overnight Sealink  ferry "Hengist"  to Ostend (no Eurostar in those days).
On the boat we got talking to a young lady by the name of Marian who was very interested in where we were going and what we were doing - at least until her boyfriend (who was daringly taking her to Berlin for the weekend) got fed up of being upstaged and took her away!
We arrived Ostend at 04.30.

To be continued.....