I was wondering if anyone could help me. I am just starting work on a feature film about long distance lorry drivers. The story is set in the eighties and involves the overland route through the communist block to Istanbul and beyond . I’ve got the outline for the story, so I know what’s going to happen, but am looking for other material to give it more depth. I really just wanted to check a few facts with drivers who might have travelled that route, and just get a few stories. If anyone has any stories, or info or knows of any books that have been published about this I would love to know. Have asked Rikki’s permission to post here. Hope someone is able to help. Thanks
Hi silverlady,
There are many threads on this forum that deal with the Middle East run by drivers who travelled many times through what was in those days,“The communust bloc”.
If you read any of the previous threads you will find that every driver had his own unique experiences,I’m sure that many of my contemporaries can come up with enough anecdotes to keep you entertained for hours.
I spent 12 years on the m/e run,using the commie bloc route for much of that time.I am in the process of putting much of this down in print in the hope of having it published as a book before it’s too late,after all,former Middle East drivers are literally a dying breed!
Are there any of these films or documentaries that have actually come to fruition, there must be at least one request for this sort of information every month, many are dismissed as troublesome or meddlesome journalists 
Check with BBC Radio 4 as one of their reporters travelled with a driver through the Eastern Block in the early 90’s and the programme was broadcast in two parts 
Good Luck RDF
RDF
And dont forget the combe in the top pocket still got the hair have you
Roger haywood
Silverlady, perhaps you could give a rough outline of the story so that many of the drivers who did that route can clarify some of the questions you obviously have. Also to get a feel for the characters who drove the m/e reading a copy of Ashley’s book ‘’ Astran the long haul pioneers’’ will give you an insight along with loads of pictures of the trucks and the conditions they had to drive through not to mention the drivers.
Dear all, thanks for your replies. Will go to BBC and look at book recommended. Have attached outline of story so far. Would be really interested to hear any comments/advice.
It’s the eighties. Ivan ( big guy, calm, fatherly, a peacemaker with a good sense of humor) has been driving Long haul to the middle east for most of his life. He’s fifty now, and the doctors have told him he’s got a heart condition. It’s not going to kill him, but he’s going to have to give up driving long distance. This will be his last run. He’s traveling the usual route with the usual crew. He decides not to tell them his news. They’re a bunch of colorful characters, mostly younger than Ivan and more impetuous. On the way back the lads want to pick up two welsh girls: JEN and MAGGIE who are looking for a lift from Londra camp to home. Ivan’s against it: If they take the girls into the communist block they will be added to their papers - they’ll have to take them back out. They’ll be together for four days and conflicts may develop. Ivan doesn’t want trouble on this his last trip. But the lads overrule his better judgment. The journey begins. Maggie is ok, but Jen is emotionally needy. However, all goes well until they decide to cancel a day in (name of town?), to show the girls a good time. They go into (?)for the local nightlife. The next morning Jen is missing, and Luckless (one of the youngest drivers) has acquired himself a local girl CARLA. Ivan and the crew go back to town looking for Jen. As they search Luckless comes into contact with a mean bunch of gangland thugs headed by Carla’s pimp. Meanwhile Ivan has found Jen , she’s feeling sorry for herself. She doesn’t want to go home as she can’t be bothered with the pressure of college. The other lads burst into this calm self-indulgent scene - Luckless is in trouble. Ivan runs off to help. When he arrives the thugs have cornered Luckless. Ivan talks them out of the situation by offering various duty free goods, and promising to get Carla back. With some persuasion it works. With the crew safely back at camp, Ivan returns to the town with Carla. Compared to the spoilt Jen , Carla’s life is tough and seriously snookered. She knows her days are numbered and asks Ivan to get her out. Initially he says that’s not possible. However, as he thinks more about the hopelessness of her situation, he realizes he can’t just sit by. He gets his crew out of town and arranges for another driver to pick her up on his way through. The arrangement is tenuous and can easily go wrong, but it’s worth a try. The drivers arrive back in England. Cath and Jen take their belongings and walk across the Severn bridge. Ivan sits with his mates in a greasy spoon. They are all laughing and joking. He takes his keys sadly from his pocket and places them on the table. He looks out of the window and sees Carla is looking in. She looks modern, clean inconspicuous. She smiles at him presses her hand against the glass window and then disappears.
Some quick questions: Where would this town be? What was the route? (was it always the same or different? Did the documentation in the passports have a name?
silverlady:
Dear all, thanks for your replies. Will go to BBC and look at book recommended. Have attached outline of story so far. Would be really interested to hear any comments/advice.It’s the eighties. Ivan ( big guy, calm, fatherly, a peacemaker with a good sense of humor) has been driving Long haul to the middle east for most of his life. He’s fifty now, and the doctors have told him he’s got a heart condition. It’s not going to kill him, but he’s going to have to give up driving long distance. This will be his last run. He’s traveling the usual route with the usual crew. He decides not to tell them his news. They’re a bunch of colorful characters, mostly younger than Ivan and more impetuous. On the way back the lads want to pick up two welsh girls: JEN and MAGGIE who are looking for a lift from Londra camp to home. Ivan’s against it: If they take the girls into the communist block they will be added to their papers - they’ll have to take them back out. They’ll be together for four days and conflicts may develop. Ivan doesn’t want trouble on this his last trip. But the lads overrule his better judgment. The journey begins. Maggie is ok, but Jen is emotionally needy. However, all goes well until they decide to cancel a day in (name of town?), to show the girls a good time. They go into (?)for the local nightlife. The next morning Jen is missing, and Luckless (one of the youngest drivers) has acquired himself a local girl CARLA. Ivan and the crew go back to town looking for Jen. As they search Luckless comes into contact with a mean bunch of gangland thugs headed by Carla’s pimp. Meanwhile Ivan has found Jen , she’s feeling sorry for herself. She doesn’t want to go home as she can’t be bothered with the pressure of college. The other lads burst into this calm self-indulgent scene - Luckless is in trouble. Ivan runs off to help. When he arrives the thugs have cornered Luckless. Ivan talks them out of the situation by offering various duty free goods, and promising to get Carla back. With some persuasion it works. With the crew safely back at camp, Ivan returns to the town with Carla. Compared to the spoilt Jen , Carla’s life is tough and seriously snookered. She knows her days are numbered and asks Ivan to get her out. Initially he says that’s not possible. However, as he thinks more about the hopelessness of her situation, he realizes he can’t just sit by. He gets his crew out of town and arranges for another driver to pick her up on his way through. The arrangement is tenuous and can easily go wrong, but it’s worth a try. The drivers arrive back in England. Cath and Jen take their belongings and walk across the Severn bridge. Ivan sits with his mates in a greasy spoon. They are all laughing and joking. He takes his keys sadly from his pocket and places them on the table. He looks out of the window and sees Carla is looking in. She looks modern, clean inconspicuous. She smiles at him presses her hand against the glass window and then disappears.
Some quick questions: Where would this town be? What was the route? (was it always the same or different? Did the documentation in the passports have a name?
Silverlady…To my knowledge it was just a recording aired on Radio 4, rather than a book…The story sounds good albeit find it difficult to accept that those long haul God fearing drivers would be messing with ladies en-route and delaying the trip 
sinbin31:
RDFAnd dont forget the combe in the top pocket still got the hair have you
Roger haywood
Hair still good, just like a male model with combe close by… Can’t go out today we have a typical Kuwait dust storm.
Hi Silverlady, you wouldn’t be trying to wind a load of old lorry drivers up would you 
. You might of received a few more replies if Ricci had endorsed your post but I can understand why a few of the older fellers on here are a bit reluctant to share their exploits with the media. Being an old sceptic, there appears to be quite a few wind up posts on this site recently and who is Cath 
did the driver swap her for Maggie at The Windmill ?.
Cath and Jen take their belongings and walk across the Severn bridge.
Which reminds me, where is The Burpin Sausage 
. It’s about time that he stopped playing with his didgeridoo and posted some of his Commie Block experiences on here.
Sorry, course Cath is actually Maggie. I am still playing about with names at the moment. No, the project isn’t a wind up. I’ve had stuff on the BBC and run a registered charity that makes films with community groups. I made one with ww2 vetrans a little while back. I’ve got a play that I am hoping to get Arts council funding for at the moment. This idea is something that I’ve been toying with for about eight months. I got through to the last stages of the UK’s Film Council’s First Feature development fund last year with a different idea, but they didn’t go for it, so I thought I would try something different, and this project is the result. It normally takes me about six months to get a first draft, but it can take longer. I haven’t used this kind of forum before, so you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t reply in the right way, but I think I am beginning to get the hang of it. I ordered a celebration of Astran, so thanks for that, that sounded like a really interesting story. I’ve also got a BBC DVD “Destination Doha”, it arrived this morning so will have a watch of that. One of the posts here mentioned that you get a lot of requests for stories/information from journalists but nothing ever comes of it. I’m not a journalist and I can’t speak for other writers, but I know with my own work that sometimes it can take eight years to get something I have written actually produced. Sometimes it gets accepted but never gets used, and sometimes it sits on the shelf … I like to think its just waiting rather than completely redundant. This story is fictional which gives it a lot more scope, but I do want it to have the logistics of the route as factual. If there are any images from the route that you can remember as being really awe inspiring I would love to hear about those. Maybe I should put up a title at the top of my post asking for that kind of thing? Just things that you saw from your cab, things that were really visual, they might be haunting, sad, funny, anything you can think of would be great. At the moment the project is just a series of place holders, I think (despite the wrong name!) that the outline for the story is ok. I’m not sure about the ending, but I almost need to do a first draft before I get a good feel for it. To tell the truth I don’t think there will be anything in it that really upsets you. I’m not that kind of writer. Will tell you how I get on with Destination Doha, think this is the DVD that you recommended as it is in two parts. Sorry again about the muddle up with the name.
silverlady:
…Will go to BBC and look at book recommended…
Or you could go out and BUY the book as the author intended!!
Im sure ashleigh put alot of time and effort into writing it and such should be financially rewarded, you could always claim it back on expenses!!
silverlady:
…It’s the eighties. Ivan ( big guy, calm, fatherly, a peacemaker with a good sense of humor) has been driving Long haul to the middle east for most of his life. He’s fifty now…
If it is in the 80s, this guy is 50 and has been driving long haul to the M/E for most of his life then he would have started driving down there in the 1950s!!!
Im no expert at all on the M/E run but im sure no one was running that way at that time!! Im, sure our older and definitely more experienced members who have actually done the job could clarify that one!!
silverlady:
Some quick questions: Where would this town be? What was the route? (was it always the same or different? Did the documentation in the passports have a name?
Q. A. It depends on which country they are in.
Q. B. It would depend on which border crossing that they were useing.
Q. C. What documentation in the passport .
Hi silverlady, you certainly sound as if you need a lot of help with your research. I think that bullitt was spot on with his deduction 
and in the fifties apart from some British drivers useing The Berlin Corridor it seems that it was mainly Russian tanks crossing the borders into Czechoslovakia and Hungary so it might be a good idea to say that Ivan had been driving down to the Middle East for about fifteen years .
It wasn’t always a case of several drivers leaving the depot at the same time but you would often meet up with other drivers on the way in places like Dover, on the boat or waiting at some of the borders. I do remember that passengers names were not added to the trucks paperwork as passengers had to have a valid passport and a visa.
A Bulgarian, Rumanian, Hungarian and a Czechoslovakian visa could all be obtained at the borders although in about the mid eighties you had to get your Bulgarian and Czecho visa from an embassy outside the country. I have no idea how long this lasted for maybe it was until the fall of communism, hopefully the Red Fox or somebody will know. I do remember that if you were on your way home you could get a Czech visa from their embassy in Budapest which they would issue while you waited. Some of the places where drivers stopped in Hungary were The Hotel Wein and The Aero Hotel in Budapest and The Windmill Restaurant near Keckskemet
The Commie Block was not a place where drivers usually “cancelled” unless they were waiting for a load so most drivers preferred to push on through to The National Hotel in Belgrade where they knew that there would be a good chance of meeting up with other drivers and where they could get a shower, a good mixed grill and a beer.
It might be a good idea to wait until bestbooties book comes out and see if you can make it into a film 
.
Regards Steve.
Hi Silver Lady
I fully support the comments from Steve and whilst all stories must have a beginning and an ending, the ones that are researched well and based on realistic events are always the best.
Having done more that 90 trips well past the Bosporus in the 80’s I can assure you that most professional drivers travelled alone or with one other good driver, rather than in groups of wasters 
To travel in a group was just a pain in the back side, which I and most professionals avoided.
To have girls in the cab in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czech and DDR invariably also resulted in being a pain in the backside as you got pulled non stop by the police thinking the girl was one of theirs.
For those silly guys who did pick up the back packers, the free ride invariably was not a free ride for the girls involved and the last thing a driver would want would be to take a bad dose of the flu home to the wife. 
I admire anyone who has the ability to write well, but for clarities sake base your book/Film/Documentary on factual research.
All the best and good luck RDF
Well said Rick did u combe the hair before that statment
Roger
I do not know about in the 80’s but before then,I got visa’s for Czech and the Arab places at their embassies, I have also got a czech one at the border, as for passengers in commie countries, they was no problem if they had a western passport, their was all nationalites hitchhiking down to India in those days, they used to put up messages in the “Pudding Shop” Lales resturant, as any middle east driver would tell you, so your story lacks true up to date jnfo.
In 1974 I was 27 and can assure you the last thing on my mind on the way to and from Shiraz was women !
[mind you, I was in a non -sleeper 110].
It’s just come to mind that there was a film made towards the end of the 70’s called Alfie not with Michael Caine but Alan Parsons the musician from the Animals but along the same theme with Alfie as a truck driving Casanova doing europe, worth checking out.
That’s right, it was called Alfie 2, a blue and white FB 88 iirc.
i went to istanbul and syrian border, via hungary,czech and so on with my dad in the late70 poss early 80,s he drove for Ohs…blue colur truck, think they were based in rainham at time…they ran a lot of macks too… good times, dad name is george , red hair n scotch…