Locomotive engineer at the Iron Curtain
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Werner Grubeck was born on the 14th of March in 1952 in Gmünd in Austria. Until the end of WWII, his family lived in České Velenice (Deutsche Unterwilans in German). His father apprenticed in the local railway workshops, then he was drafted in the Wehrmacht and suffered an injury at the front. After the war ended, his mother, father and grandmother had to run away to Austria only with their personal possessions and a small wooden cart. Werner Grubeck apprenticed as a locomotive engineer and for all his life, he worked for the Austrian Railways. As a locomotive engineer, he rode often along the Czech-Austrian border. He was an indirect witness of several attempts to flee across the border. The passion of his life was and still is sport. As a young football player, he had the chance to play and trian with well-known Czechoslovak players, such as Ladislav Vízek, Antonín Panenka, and František Cipro. After the revolution, in 1990, he organised the first friendly match between Czechoslovak and Austrian teams of České Velenice and Gmünd. For half a year, he even became a coach of Czech footballers. Nowadays, he is a great fan of hockey and the HC Motor České Budějovice team. He loves to explore Southern Bohemia on a bike. His daughter is attending a business academy in Gmünd which is attended by Czech students as well. The 2020 Covid international travel restrictions reminded him, with some nostalgy, smuggling the cigarettes across the Iron Curtain.
