EuroLife: Day 33

Before reading this post, you must go see two videos on YouTube. Here are the addresses:

Levis: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG4MKtgeFyc
One: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFWPeVfWB9o

Now you've seen one of the most beautiful television adds and one of the best music videos from the mid-nineties. They present two visions of Eastern Europe, visions that are grainy, black, and white. They picture the East in a range of murky grays and black-brown shades that seem as noble as they are drab.

The song "One" comes from U2's 1991 release, Achtung Baby, an album they largely recorded in East Berlin. Almost every song on the record takes on a new meaning when you remember where it was recorded, and when you remember that it was released just one month after reunification. In the first track, Bono sings of the subway moving from the East to the first station in the West, Zoo Station. "I'm ready for the shuffle, ready for the deal, ready to let go of the steering wheel," Bono sings. The solemn black and white images of the East present a stark contrast to this image of the West. And then there's the song called "One," a portentous title in light of October third. In this admittedly flexible song -- it seems to be about the band, Bono's marriage, Germany, Ireland...at one point Bono even dedicated it to the people of Serajevo -- Bono proclaims, "we are one but we're not the same."

Anyway, the video for the song features Larry driving a Trabi through the wet, deserted streets of East Berlin. (It also features him in drag!) For the Achtung Baby tour, the band brought along a number of Trabis, which they hung from the ceiling. They built the stage lighting into the headlights. With the video, the tour, and the Levis jeans commercial, the car entered my consciousness as symbol that skillfully and ambiguously blended kitsch and genuine nostalgia for times more simple and earnest.

The name of the car proves equally ambiguous. "Trabbant" means satellite. The name might indicate the the success of Sputnik, launched in the same year as the Trabi, or it might be taken as an expression of the relationship between Eastern Germany and the Soviet Union.

The car symbolizes -- no, exemplifies -- all that was worst about the planned economies of Eastern Europe. The design of the car remained unchanged for thirty-five years. With a two stroke engine, the car went from 0 to 60 in 21 seconds. It was designed to drive at about forty-five miles an hour. The body of the car was made out of fiberglass, and it included recycled waste products from the Soviet cotton industry and phenol resins from the East Germany dye industry.

People often waited on a list for years to get the car. As a result, used cars often sold for more than new ones. As a result, people who did not need the car put their names on the list, figuring they could turn around and sell the car for a profit. And, as a result of this, the waiting lists grew longer still.

Thirty-one million of these cars were made, and there are still more than 66,000 on the road today. We see them pretty often around Jena.

Despite all the problems with the car, its nostalgia or kitsch value remains. In good condition, the car sells today for as much as 10,000 Euros. Struck by the marketing possibilities, a small company in Bavaria recently purchased the name. They plan to put BMW engines in them and sell them for a whopping 50,000 Euros. So start saving your nickels and dimes.

So, once again, I've published under Dolores' name. Oh well. Michael.