Bar Wars at Żagań

Friday, 19th April 1985 (part one)

The original plan was to catch the 22.30 from Poznan and travel overnight to Zgorzelec, from where we would "walk 4km via the frontier bridge" to the German town of Görlitz in the early morning.
Perhaps on reflection we thought this was too much like a scene from a cold-war era spy movie (and of course it was still the "cold war era"), but for whatever reason we changed the plan and left on the 20.30 to the obscure town of Żagań. I remember this train as being very busy and we left Poznan crammed into a full eight-seater compartment with a more than three-hour journey ahead of us. Doubtless conditioned by the price differential back home we never seemed to think about buying first-class tickets and enjoying a bit more comfort - or at least space - on these trips.

There was no catering on the train, so when our connection rolled into  Żagań station at 02.16 we were pleased to see it had a restaurant car.  On-train catering in Poland was operated by an organisation known as WARS, and these initials, together with the universal word for an establishment purveying alcoholic liquors were emblazoned along the side of the carriage as BAR - WARS which, at 02.16 after waiting an hour at a god-forsaken Polish backwater railway station, we found amusing!

In the hope that beer and food might be available we clambered aboard.  There were no other customers. At the far end was a bar counter with a glass display case of the sort once common in British pubs and cafés containing stale pies and curled-up sandwiches. This one, however, was completely empty. Bob recalls that we somehow established that the food on offer was boiled eggs and  blackcurrant juice. There was certainly no beer and any vodka there might once have been had probably been consumed by the large, unshaven, middle-aged attendant, dressed in trousers and a dirty vest, slumped in his chair behind the counter!

We crossed the border back into the DDR (which felt quite like home after Poland) in the early hours despite not having valid tickets and visas that might have expired at midnight.  The visas wouldn't have been a problem - we were leaving anyway - and the lack of tickets was probably explained by the reluctance of the booking clerk at  Żagań  station to sell tickets to the frontier, or beyond, to foreigners at that time of night.  We seem to have got away with it, as Bob's notes reveal that we arrived at Cottbus in the DDR at 04.25 and after almost an hour-and-a-half there set off for Zittau, in the far south-east of the country.

For what I hope are fairly obvious reasons there are no photos of this part of the trip  -so here is one of what awaited us at Zittau.

We arrived at Zittau with an hour to spare before the 10.17 to Kurort Oybin departed.

to be continued...