Revisionism in the DDR

My previous posts in this saga of our trip to the DDR and Poland in 1985 saw us in Leipzig about to board the overnight express to Poland.  Since then there have been a number of delays awaiting promised new information from my fellow participants, which would improve the accuracy -and hopefully the interest - of the account.

Some of that information is still delayed due to, as the railways would say: "operational difficulties". In this case a technical problem with the interface between a PC and a Scanner in Yorkshire, but enough has emerged to allow me to at least review and correct some of the earlier record.

The Trip So Far

The first revelation is that we did not travel on the "Ost West Express" from Ostend but on the rather more modest "Ostend- Wien (Vienna) Express"  as far as Köln (Cologne) joining the Ost West Express there. Even that was not the original plan, which would have seen us crossing from Dover on a Jetfoil, which, being faster than the ferry, would have got us to Ostend in time to catch an earlier train to Dűsseldorf. Here we would have got the 79 tram to Duisburg!  The 79 was famous in tram circles for being possiby the only tram service in the world to provide on onboard licensed buffet, which we would no doubt have taken advantage of.

Quite why we couldn't or didn't catch the Jetfoil hasn't come to light, but the service suffered from a number of "operational difficulties" of its own and was fairly short-lived, so we probably had no choice in the matter.

This was just one of a number of deviations from the planned itinerary, which Mark, as a true railwayman, had set out in great detail before we set off, but which required regular  re-planning as events unfolded.

Me and Bob replanning after another disruption to the itinerary.

We spent just short of two hours at the Inner German Border at Helmstedt (time of which I have no memory whatsoever) before continuing on the 05.58 to Magdeburg. After our trip on the cable car to the "Witches Dancefloor" at Thale we  abandonned the plan to go to Gernrode and catch a series of narrow-guage steam trains through the Harz Mountains that would have eventually brought us to our planned overnight stop at Wernigerode. Presumably, this was because "Plan A" (which has now come to light) in the absence of a suitable train called for us to get there "by bus, taxi or hitch-hike"!  As Mark now admits, our expectation that the driver of an east German Trabant would stop and pick up three suspicious western tourists was over-optimistic in the extreme. Taxis were scarce outside cities in the DDR and it appears that the only bus available was going to Wernigerode anyway.  Was it perhaps one of these...?

Thale Bus Station

The final piece of the jigsaw of that portion of the trip that has now come to light is that in Wernigerode we stayed at the Hotel zur Post, which is still in business today.

A modern image of the Hotel zur Post, Wernigerode.

Hopefully, we will soon be able to board that express at Leipzig and continue through the night to Poland.