Drei Spiegeleier mit Frites

Friday, 19th April 1985 (part two)

After a marathon twelve-and-a-half hour journey from Poznan, including surviving the Polish Railways BAR WARS experience (see yesterday's post) we arrived at Zittau in the far south-east of the DDR at 09.06 on Friday morning.

The town was the junction for a small narrow-gauge system of both passenger and freight trains consisting of a main line running about 9km south to Bertsdorf, where it bifurcated with two short branch lines running to Kurort Oybin and Kurort Jonsdorf ("Kurort" being the German term for a spa). The southern termini were almost on the border with Czechoslovakia, as it then was.

We had an hour at the station before catching the 1017 to Oybin

Narrow-gauge trains left from a separate station and passed in front of the Main Line station in the background.

Clearly, having come this far, we had to cover the whole system. The lower part of the line still carried feight which was conveyed in main line wagons riding on transporters so as to fit the narrow-gauge tracks.

Narrow-gauge freight near Zittau

At Oybin, we stayed on the train and returned to the junction at Bertsdorf. It was now 11.30 and the rest of the timetable dictated an early lunch.  There was no buffet on Bertsdorf station but across the road lay the Station Hotel. Now that we were back in the DDR there was no trouble getting beer, which I recall as being above avaerage for the country and they also did food. Quite often seemingly extensive menus could prove disappointing, with many items being "off" so it was usually better to just ask the waiter what he recommended. Whether this was what we did or not I can't remember, but I do remember what we got - "Drei Spiegeleier mit Frites":

"Drei Spiegeleier (chips were included)

No one took photos of their dinner in 1985 - the above was pinched off the internet!

The beer was good enough to tempt us into a couple more, but then we started to get disapproving looks from the staff, so as we didn't want to overstay our welcome we made our way back to the station for the 1226 to Jonsdorf.

Leaving the Bahnhofshotel after lunch. "Steady, lads!"

The hotel is still in business today and the building work is finally finnished!
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 The line worked on the basis of alternate trains from Zittau running through to either Oybin or Jonsdorf with a connection at Bertsdorf for whichever destination wasn't served by the through train. This made Bertsdorf a busy station at least as far as train movements were concerned, although there didn't seem to be many passengers. Surprisingly, in a country where all public transport was government owned and controlled there was a parallel bus service linking Zittau with the Kurorts, which most travellers seemed to prefer.

Bertsdorf. Plenty of staff but we seem to be the only passengers.

Not long after our visit the line and much of the area through which it ran came under threat from a proposed opencast mine development. The DDR relied on its deposits of lignite (or brown coal)  for much of its power supply and its dependence on it usually took precedence over any other concerns as far as government policy went and the line would have been closed. Fortunately, nothing had been done by the time of German reunification in 1990 and it survives to this day.

Dresden city centre. Our hotel was one of the blocks on the left.

After completing the system by riding to Jonsdorf and back we returned to Zittau for a mid-afternoon train north to Dresden.  After checking-in to the Hotel Königstein - a charachterless tower block in the city centre - we went exploring.  Bob has a ticket for the funicular railway and I have a photo of the lower station, but neither of us can remember anything else about it.

In 1984, Mark and I had enjoyed an evening out in Dresden "but only just". I assume that we would have put the knowledge we gained then to  good use and enjoyed a night out again, including a few "Felsenkellers" no doubt.

to be continued...