The Prague Post Online: News: Filmmakers tour Asia by Trabant

November 22nd, 2008

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Filmmakers tour Asia by Trabant

Three men battle the elements during 15,000-km journey

By Lisa Nuch Venbrux
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
September 5th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO

The 1986 Trabant 601 carried the trio — with the help of a strong push now and then — for 50 days of an adventure made into a documentary.

In late summer, people in the Central Asian steppes saw something that may well have seemed a mirage. Between the Caspian and Aral seas, a bright yellow Trabant rattled down makeshift roadways in a cloud of fine white dust.

The three men manning the now lifeless machine returned to Prague Aug. 19. In the span of 50 days, they traveled through the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine, covering 15,300 kilometers (9,507 miles) of ground.

Prague-based journalist Dan Přibáň, 31, led the Trans National Trabant Tour 2007. This project, which will culminate in a documentary, began the previous year when he convinced Vladislav Růžička, 25, and Jan Martin Kozel, 22, to come along.

“When he asked me whether I would like to join him, I thought to myself, ‘This sounds mad,’ ” recalls Růžička, a dentist and journalist. “I hesitated maybe less than a split second [then said] ‘OK, I’ll go.’ ”

To those familiar with the cars, navigating steep inclines and meter-deep potholes inside a two-cylinder, plastic East German jalopy seems nothing short of insane.

“My family agreed in one voice that it was the stupidest thing they had ever heard,” says Kozel, a sociology student and cameraman.

Přibáň, however, was sure such a journey could succeed. In the early 20th century, explorers from the Czech lands set out on expeditions in cars similarly equipped to his 1986 Trabant 601. He cites these travels as inspiration.

“Our model was František Alexander Elstner. … He was like a superstar,” Přibáň says. In 1933, Elstner and his wife, Eva, braved roadless deserts in North Africa in a Czechoslovak Aero 662. They later traveled across the United States and Mexico by Škoda and through Africa in an Aero Minor.

Paying tribute to Elstner meant embarking on a journey with some risk of failure. Přibáň rejected the very idea of taking an SUV, and made no technical modifications to the car.

“To adjust the car in order to prepare it for these roads would mean denying [the journey’s] basic idea,” Přibáň says.

Those roads, by all accounts, were shoddy and practically impassable at times.

“We started to use the term ‘very bad road’ from Bulgaria, but only in Kazakhstan did we understand what it meant,” Přibáň says. “The tar cracks into big chunks and all these heavy cars … move the road chunks to the sides.”

The potholes this created ended up being the least of the group’s problems. A fine dust blanketing drags from Iran to Kazakhstan infiltrated the engine, causing it to gasp and seize.

“You have to stop, clean the sparks, close the hatch, start the engine, move the car from the dust, go 10 kilometers, again and again and again,” Přibáň recalls. “There were moments when I thought that we might not be able to make it.”

These mechanical snags subsided once the group crossed into Russia, but there they encountered a different kind of problem — corrupt police officers.

“[Russian police] caught us unprepared for their longtime traditional sport — demanding egregious bribes,” Růžička says. The group forked over 500-ruble payments on a regular basis.

These officers, however, were an exception to the rule. All along the way, the three men encountered an endless parade of welcoming, sometimes surprised, faces gaping back at the garishly decorated car.

“They watched, took pictures, jumped around, shook their heads,” Kozel says. “They could not understand that we Europeans would spend so much money to drive this old crappy car to see this part of the world.”

After turning back at Samarkand, Uzbekistan, the car failed to start on its own power from Ukraine to Prague. The men, undaunted, pushed the car every time they started it.

“We always tried to park it downhill,” Růžička says.

End of the line

Everyday life on the road smelled like used clothes and stale beer. Tied to the roof and crammed into the spaces between three specially fitted seats were small packs of clothing, sleeping bags, emergency foods like soup packets, and bottles of water. Camera equipment and a bulky medical kit left room for little else.

“We slept next to the car; there was no rain,” Přibáň says. In big cities they stayed in hotels, but for no more than 10 days total.

Stopping at roadside stands to eat kebabs became the norm. At one tearoom in Uzbekistan, they received special, almost surreal, treatment.

“The guy asked us if we wanted fish,” Přibáň recalls. “In the middle of the desert … he went to the backyard where he had a tiny concrete pool. He took a net and fished out a really beautiful and big fish, killed it, gutted it, gave the intestines to the dog and baked the fish,” he continues. “Then he drained the pool.”

Though crowded into a small car for a month and a half, under a gleaming desert sun, Přibáň insists they didn’t argue — much.

“Whenever there was a serious problem with the car … and I needed [Kozel] to help me, he was running around me with a camera,” Přibáň says, laughing. He jokes that Růžička brought enough medical equipment for a roadside organ transplant, but none of the basics.

“That is not true,” Růžička retorts. “We naturally had all basic medications. Maybe if Dan had been taking them regularly, his diarrhea wouldn’t have been so tenacious.”

Kozel, meanwhile, says the space limitations of the car were partly to blame for some bickering. When he wanted a hookah in Iran, “they looked like they were going to leave me there, so I gave up.”

For the record, the men remain friends. Kozel and Růžička both agree Přibáň piloted the car with skill. Přibáň and Růžička take care to point out the friendliness and vibrancy of those they encountered, especially in Iran.

Showing positive sides of the region, in fact, is part of their goal. They plan to put together a two-hour documentary and air a five-part series about the trip on Czech TV this fall.

“Despite TV and the Internet, [Central Asia] is extremely unknown,” Přibáň says. “Nobody shows people that it is so beautiful there.”

Kozel agrees. “I brought back 40 hours of material. We have many shots of beautiful nature, breathtaking landscape, all the people we met,” he says.

“But the most impressive shots I have are pictures of Dan cursing our engine.”

— Naďa Černá and Hela Balínová contributed to this report.

Lisa Nuch Venbrux can be reached at lvenbrux@praguepost.com

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