A canary-yellow vintage tram numbered 24 — its destination blind reading Sonderfahrt (special excursion run) — glides along a cobblestone street in Cottbus, the Sorbian-German city in Brandenburg that was one of East Germany's industrial centres, its elegant Jugendstil and historicist facades glowing warmly behind the heritage vehicle. This colour chrome-era postcard, produced in 1989 by Bild und Heimat of Reichenbach (Vogtl.) — the DDR's principal postcard publisher — captures one of the last years of the German Democratic Republic with an almost elegiac calm: the old tram, the old city, the old system, all about to change forever within months of this card's print date. The Cottbus tram system, known as the Straßenbahn Cottbus, dates to 1903 and this preserved car was used for historic rides. The back carries the bilingual caption in German and Swedish (Historische Straßenbahn / Historiska elektriska), catalogue number 301044/89, DDR price 0.20 Mark. Unused.