Go Trabi Go

This movie is one of my favorite films because I also come from East Germany and I like Trabis! If you don't know a Trabi: "Trabi" is the short form of "Trabant", a little car that nearly Everyone had in the GDR, even it was not very comfortable. Udo Struutz, the main character of the film, loves his Trabi, calls it "Schorsch" and treats him like a real family member. So in the first summer after the Berlin Wall has fallen he travels to Naples with his wife Rita and their 17-year-old daughter Jacqueline. Their guide is "Italienische Reise" (Italian Voyage) by the famous German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe from the year 1787. Of course their holidays are not without complications. The fact of the film that I really find fascinating is that it is not shot in a later time as other "Wende" films like Good Bye Lenin, but it is really from that time (it was shot in Summer 1990) and so it catches the real wall fall feeling - the neighbors in GDR who have now all cars from the west and laugh about Udo and his Trabi; Rita's sister and her family in West Germany who make a business out of the fall of the Iron Curtain (they rent out their caravan to refugees from Eastern Europe), or Udo himself who tries to speak Russian to the people in Rome. And I also like the music, which contains lots of styles, from girlie pop over rock to techno. I give the movie nine points.

This is not necessarily the best movie ever made, but it is a very precise look at a weird moment in history. Mankind had been sliced in half for more than 40 years by the Cold War. Suddenly it is all over and some people suddenly feel they have a lot of catching up to do.

I enjoy watching this movie with my friends from East-Germany as they always laugh at the Struutz-family's impossible misadventures, because it reminds them of their first contacts with the west. Like cheeky Jacqueline always getting the upper hand in all her encounters with respect-less and unsuspecting boys from the west. Or Udo Struutz marveling at the beauty of a West-German public toilet. Or Rita Struutz's attempts at communicating with an Italian police officer. And of course the unforgettable Diether Krebs serving up a never ending assortment of "Trabbi"-jokes as a manic, arrogant West-German trucker. These moments reflect upon many "Ossis'" (East-Germans) experiences when they first visited the west after the wall had fallen.

If you look for a document of the times, this is probably the most truthful you will find, although some scenes are pure satiric overstatement and Jacqueline makes an absolutely unnecessary escape from her family at one point just to come up with an unconvincing song, possibly directed at starting a singing career for Claudia Schmutzler, which luckily never really took off.

Stay away if you want to learn German, however! The Struutzes speak in a very, very broad Saxon dialect which sounds very different from "clean" German.

"Go Trabi Go" is a movie that consists of two elements: It is the story of a travel, but also a comedy. The Italian landscapes and sights are shown in beautiful pictures when the trip of the Struuz' passes camping sites, nudist beaches (a new experience for the people from GDR), lakes and finally Rome. Their guidebook is a diary from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Mr. Struuz is German teacher), their car a Trabant. This typical Ossi-car is one of the funny elements. The owner of the car is the father, he loves his car (which he calls "Schorsch") and this leads to many funny moments. The main comical sources are the archetypes. All the wessi's clishés towards the ossis and vice versa are put together and packed into figures, situational humor and funny dialogues. The film has many highlights, when the society of German revue artists and comedians appear in the film (e.g. Diether Krebs telling the shocked Udo Struuz 109 jokes about Trabants). I enjoyed viewing the film and I think not only people with knowledge about the wessis and the ossis will do so, too. All in all a wonderful story about a family getting away from the ex-GDR to see how the world out there really is...

We watched this in our german class and although it had the teacher running for the fast forward during the Nudist beach bit, we all really enjoyed it. I think it was one of the first times I have ever seen some of the guys in our class want to watch a movie because they like it, not just so they get out of doing some hard work. It is about a family who travels from old East Germany (?) to Rome in their little Trabi(named Georgie)following the notebook of a famous explorer. A lot of things happen to them but they eventually get to Rome. It is worth seeing and is a real feel-good movie.

As a Trabi owner I love this film simply because I can relate to the adventure of driving one - there is never a dull day when you drive a Trabant! This car is destined to be a classic and so is this film - a real 1980's style (although made in 1991) road trip and just goes to show that not everything from the former DDR has be resigned to a sad and ungracious end! But the best part is that it's all true! I have even had to shake the car (the scene on the beach) - try and guess for what reason! Enjoy - at the end of the day it's about a family - and that includes their Trabi! Car lovers as well as Cold War historians will enjoy the film from a documentary angle - others simply because it's funny!