Kate Chisholm

On the road | 1 December 2016

Plus: the dangers black travellers faced in 1930s America and a female riposte to all those aggressive male drivers who want us off the road

‘We’re going to get lots of negative attention from environmentalists,’ he cackled, great puffs of blue-grey smoke emerging from the exhaust of his two-stroke car. Will Self was crossing Tower Bridge in a Trabant, that most potent symbol of the East German socialist state, bending almost double to fit himself round the steering wheel (he’s six foot five inches in his socks) and cursing the lack of wing mirrors. Things could only get worse as he and his old friend Michael Shamash set off on their 700-mile trek across the Channel to Zwickau, in the former GDR, home of the Trabant car. Imagine trying to merge on to a German autobahn in a car made of resin and cotton that has no mirrors and starts vibrating in an ‘ugly way’ as soon as you reach 80km/h.

Self was doing penance for once having insulted Shamash by mocking people of restricted growth on a BBC1 chat show: Shamash is half the height of Self. Shamash, an enthusiast for the socialist ideals on which the GDR was founded, wanted to find out what it was really like to live in a country where everyone drove the same car. They were both using the Trabant as a vehicle for understanding ‘Ostalgie’, hoping to meet people on the road who are still nostalgic for life in the former East Germany, which boasted cheap childcare and full employment but involved up to a quarter of a million of its people in spying on each other. Self Drives: The Trabant on Radio 4 (produced by Laurence Grissell, who also helped Self and Shamash survive the rigours of their journey, no small feat) squeezed us inside that car with them, filling the post-lunch, pre-Archers slot with just the right blend of intellectual argument and comic realism.

Self is introduced to the daily challenges faced by the disabled.

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