For several years now, Rent A Trabant provides people in Budapest with moving firsthand experiences of the Eastern Bloc’s most iconic type of car: the Trabant, a surprisingly hardy 26-horsepower automobile for the masses produced with the same simple design for almost three decades. With a well-maintained fleet of these vintage vehicles, Rent A Trabant already offers Budapest tours, ultra-unique transfer services, and even the chance to drive a “Trabi” just like a rental car – but with their newly developed “Bunker” Operation Geocache challenge, the company now presents organized groups with the possibility to participate in an entertainingly educational contest that transforms the entire industrial complex of Csepel Island into a gigantic “escape room” game.
After taking the HÉV commuter train south from Pest’s Boráros Square to the Szent Imre Square stop and walking a very short distance to the main entrance of Csepel Works (“Csepel Művek” in Hungarian, as emblazoned on an antique neon sign mounted above the entryway), we cross the threshold into a fascinating part of the city that is rarely visited by most locals, let alone tourists. During peacetime and wartime since the 1890s, this is the heavy-industry center for Hungary’s capital – over the years, items produced here included stoves, motorcycles, tanks, tractors, gas heaters, guns, airplanes, and bicycles; the new Bubi bikes now rolling around Budapest were all built here.
Yet while this is still an active industrial zone, its many decades-old warehouses and oversized rusty pipes give it a run-down appearance that would be a perfect backdrop for an extended set piece in an action movie – and little do we realize that this is pretty much what we are about to experience in real life. However, when we spot a row of four nicely preserved Trabants parked in front of an old red-brick factory building just to the right after the Csepel Works entrance, we know we’ve found the correct place.
Here the friendly Rent A Trabant staff greets us, and we receive a quick lesson on how to drive this iconoclastic compact car in the surrounding parking lots. Although the Trabant seems like it could be difficult to operate, anyone who drives a manual-transmission automobile can get the hang of it within a few minutes; the main difference is that the gearstick is located on the steering-wheel column, so at first it can be disconcerting when reaching down to shift and finding nothing there… but the patient instructor calmly reminds us of the stick’s alternative location, and soon driving the Trabi is a breeze.
This is a fortunate thing, because almost immediately after our driving lesson is concluded and we are divided into teams back at the starting point, a military-issue convertible Trabant pulls up and a stern-looking uniformed Hungarian-army officer emerges, informing us that a squadron of bomber planes is approaching Csepel Island to deliver a massive air strike – and that our only hope of surviving the bombardment is to reach a central bunker tucked amid the factories. However, to earn entry to this fortified shelter, we must first drive to four checkpoints and complete varied tasks to earn pieces of a code, all while racing the other teams and a 90-minute time limit.
We are given some basic rules before receiving a booklet bearing advice and a grainy map that shows every checkpoint location; after a few quick questions we start our puttering engines, and off we go without a moment to lose. Each team must visit the checkpoints in different orders so that we aren’t street-racing head-to-head, yet we’re constantly under pressure from the knowledge that our competitors are also hurrying toward the bunker, so we push our little Trabi as fast as it can go.
Now, it must be said that Trabants are far from the most powerful cars on Hungary’s roads, but since they’re made with a minimal amount of metal these lightweight wheels are actually relatively speedy – and even when driving only 40 kilometers per hour in this wee machine, it sure feels like we’re hauling ass. As we screech around corners and swerve to dodge Csepel’s massive potholes, this already feels like a rip-roaring adventure before even reaching the first checkpoint.
After a couple of wrong turns on these labyrinthine lanes, we reach our initial destination; here an elegant woman is waiting for us, dressed in vintage clothing. It’s hard to tell exactly what time period Eszter is supposed to be from – similarly to much of the game, which combines elements of Csepel’s violent history during World War II and the authoritarian air of Hungary’s Soviet era – but before her lie piles of outfits.
Eszter’s job is to teach us the “art of disguise”. After picking random cards, we are instructed to don silly outfits based on our choices, and Eszter obviously delights in giving us points based on our willingness to dress up as characters like a tramp and a prostitute, finally handing us our hard-earned piece of the bunker code.
Next we speed at least a couple of kilometers away toward “shooting practice”, unsure of what this entails – but after weaving around some moving trucks and finding the second checkpoint, we encounter a fellow wearing head-to-toe camouflage and carrying a plastic Kalashnikov, and realize that the task description is literal.
We follow the ghillie-suited commando into the graffiti-riddled ruins of an old warehouse as he hands us a pellet gun and orders us to run between targets to take our best shots; pleased with our marksmanship, we easily earn our next segment of the bunker code .
Exhilarated by the gunplay, we zip over to the next checkpoint, mysteriously called “secret of the suitcase”; we almost miss our contact person – a dodgy-looking fellow in a long black trench coat standing in a shady alleyway – but after an extended test of our command of driving the Trabant in reverse, we emerge to find him standing beside a case with a combination lock.
In order to decode the locked luggage, we must answer a series of questions that truly boggle our brains; fortunately, between all team members we have the knowledge necessary to decipher the secret combination, open the suitcase, and collect the third piece of the bunker-entry puzzle.
Now we must drive quite a few blocks away to complete the last task – the intimidatingly named “disarming the bomb” phase – and though the map we’re working with is genuine, we end up charging down dead-end streets and becoming blocked by backing-up big rigs; knowing that the other teams are also close to the finish line, we maneuver around the obstacles and push our little Trabi to the max to make up lost time, so the smell of burning oil fills our nostrils as we finally locate the final checkpoint (we are assured that this aroma is normal when driving Trabants).
Here we find an apparently drunken communist officer standing over a giant bomb with its time-activated detonator ticking away, alongside a jumble of jigsaw-puzzle pieces. The woozy official loudly instructs us to put the pictures together, after which point we can follow lines connecting codes that will deactivate the timer.
Though we know (or at least certainly hope) that the bomb is not real, we frantically piece together the puzzles and use blue wires to connect coded sockets, defusing the explosive device with just a little time to spare and earning the final piece of the bunker-access code.
We get back behind the wheel of our trusty Trabant, and now being somewhat familiar with the roadways of Csepel Works we hurtle towards the end point – a real bunker built here to protect factory workers during World War II.
Arriving at the final destination just as the other teams’ Trabis pull up, we meet the same uniformed officer from the beginning of the game; he reviews our booklets and totals our scores from each task, determining that the We Love Budapest team is the winner! The officer proudly hands us our prize – a bottle of “Bunker” vodka – and he tells us that we may need it during the final stage of the game, just about to begin…
We are led inside of this heavily fortified relic of WWII that was carefully restored by the Budapest Scenes excursion company, and are shown around this fascinating shelter where countless laborers huddled for safety within walls almost two meters thick while Allied planes dropped bombs on Csepel’s factories during the war.
After a quick tour of the facilities (complete with gas masks, medical equipment, and antique signs), we are taken into a special room where a sophisticated speaker system is arranged, and when the lights are turned off a realistic audio recording begins that recreates the sound of approaching warplanes. Through the magic of massive bass woofers, the booming sound of bombs hitting Csepel really reverberates through the room and our bodies, actually shaking the shelves and instilling real fear – we can only imagine how terrifying it must’ve been for those who experienced air strikes here.
With the game concluded, we marveled at how much Hungarian history was imparted in a short time, all while delighting in driving a characteristic communist-era car and feeling real adventure along the way. The “Bunker” game can be specially arranged for individual groups at varied prices, and any participant with a valid driver’s license from any country can drive one of the Trabis – check out the Rent A Trabant website for more details.
