“Twenty-five years after the fall of the wall, it’s very symbolic to cross the Bornholmer Brücke in a ‘Trabi’,” reports euronews correspondent Olaf Bruns. <br /><br />The reason, he says, is that the bridge is where people forced open the first East-West Berlin border crossing on 9th November 1989.<br /><br />A Trabant invasion followed as the old-fashioned East German cars joined hordes of people pouring into the West.<br /><br />A quarter of a century on, hundreds of ‘Trabi’ enthusiasts dusted down their favourite vehicles and drove proudly in convoy along the streets of the German capital.<br /><br />“It sends cold shivers up and down my spine,” said one driver.<br /><br />Even in 1989 the vehicles seemed to westerners to belong to a distant past.<br /><br />But for their many fans, their frailty and quaintness are the attraction.<br /><br />“Men of steel ride cars of cardboard!” said another enthusiast.<br /><br />Angela and Wolfgang Burkert live two streets away from the Bornholmer Brücke. They were among the crowds who crossed the bridge on foot on that November evening in 1989 – and were delighted to have their passports stamped with a six-month western visa.<br /><br />“We heard all that noise, our street was packed full of cars, it’s the crossroads just here. And than my husband said: it’s really true, they are serious about it, so let’s go and have a look!” said Angela Burkert.<br /><br />“We couldn’t believe it at first. We’d lived here for decades – yet now the world was over. We ended up accepting it!” her husband Wolfgang added.<br /><br />The Trabant was also derided because its two-cylinder motor was totally inefficient, and produced a powerful stinking smell.<br /><br />Yet even for this environmental problem, at least one enthusiast has found a solution.<br /><br />Amid Sunday’s celebrations he was spotted crossing the bridge in a ‘Trabi’ – but closer inspection of its hollowed-out shell revealed that he was riding a bicycle underneath.
