EAST Germans had a joke about the Trabant, their national car for 30 years: "What do you call a Trabant at the top of a hill?

A miracle." Unfair? Not really, as I discover on a tour of Berlin, shoehorned into the back of one.

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More than three million Trabants, meaning "companions" and generally called Trabis, were produced under the Communist regime. With two-stroke engines and reinforced plastic bodies, they were basic but drivers could still plug in an electric razor and, with impressive multi-tasking, shave at the wheel.

I'm in Berlin with my wife Clare at an interesting time. This August is the 50th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall, a potent symbol of Cold War partition. So it's apt that we join the car tour a few hundred yards from the site of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous gateway between West and East.

Dozens of Trabis stretch across the car park of Trabi-Safari, the tour operator. We squeeze into the back of one and tuck our knees under our chins as driver Frank Lagershausen switches on the ignition. The car coughs noisily into life, like a smoker on 60 a day.

We trundle round the streets at the head of a convoy of Trabis full of tourists confident enough to drive themselves. We peer through the steamed-up windows as our front-seat guide Simone Matern gives a running commentary on the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate, the Tiergarten Park and Berlin's clutch of world-class museums.

Transport is a theme of our weekend. We've come by rail: a mid-morning East Midlands train to London, across the platform at St Pancras for the Eurostar to Paris, then the 8.20pm sleeper to Berlin, arriving on time at 9.01am. Not 9am note. 9.01am. It's civilised and relaxing, with the attendant bringing coffee and croissants to our cabin as dawn breaks over the misty forests of northern Germany.

In Berlin we use WelcomeCard travel passes to hop on buses, trams and trains. The contrast between getting round today and doing so during the Cold War is highlighted at the Mauermuseum, dedicated to the Wall. The museum describes the desperate ways East Berliners tried to escape in hot-air balloons or in suitcases.

A few stops away, the DDR Museum evokes everyday East Berlin life before the Wall came down in 1989. Crowds of visitors are watching old propaganda films and exploring a recreated Seventies flat with floral wallpaper, net curtains and cassette player.

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A movement called Ostalgie, "nostalgia for the East", has flourished in Berlin. Which seems odd given the repressive regime, whose Stasi secret-police files filled 110 miles of shelf space.

Berliners talk with awe of the night the Wall came down.

"Going over the border, it was like smelling perfume, " says former East Berliner Denise Meyer.

She has adapted to life in the West, working as director of marketing at the Hollywood Media Hotel which appeals to lovers of cinema and sumptuous breakfasts.
Staying in the Richard Burton Room, theming is modest: two posters of Burton gazing soulfully out of the window to Kurfürstendamm, the Champs-Élysées of Berlin.
On our last day, we take a morning train. After changing at Cologne, Brussels and London, we're home for dinner. Between connections in Cologne, we stroll to the cathedral where an organ recital is thundering to a close.

You can't do that if you fly.

THE KNOWLEDGE:
Rail Europe (0844 848 4070/www.raileurope.co.uk) offers returns from London St Pancras to Berlin, via Paris overnight, from £161.

East Midlands Trains (0845 712 5678/www.eastmidlandstrains.co.uk) offers returns from Sheffield to St Pancras from £14.

Hollywood Media Hotel Berlin (dialling from UK: 0049 30 8891 0270/www.filmhotel.de) offers doubles from £97 per night (two sharing), B&B. Trabi-Safari tours (30 2759 2273/www.trabi-safari.de) from £25pp.

Two-day WelcomeCard (www.visitberlin.de/en) from £14, with unlimited public transport and discounts.

German Tourist Office: 0207 317 0908/ www.germany.travel