I was thinking what was it like trying to get kits in the old eastern bloc during the cold war?
i'd assume if it as russian it'd be ok but what about the western kits from tamiya ect were
these easy to get or what and was it easy to get ww2 german stuff or was that still too much of a touchy point ?

I bought a tank kit (I use the term loosely) when I went to East Berlin (pre-Wall down days). It was of some generic ISU turretless SP gun in an off-scale. I'd guess it was about 1/30th or so. I ended up giving it to my platoon sergeant's son along with a whole lot of 1/72 Esci armor kits when I left Germany. IIRC, the cost was about 5 East German marks (same price as a liter of vodka). The exchange rate at that time was 20 East German marks to the dollar. That worked out to about 25¢ for the kit in 1989.

Rob
Were you there when the wall came down? I was there when it went up in '61. I wanted so bad to fly over to help tear it down just couldn't afford the flight or to take the time off.

I was stationed in Germany when the Wall came down and made one trip to Berlin before the Wall was down (1989) and one trip there after the Wall was down (1990), but before the reunification. I still have a framed Stars & Stripes newspaper dated 3 October 1990 from when Germany reunited.

I spent my 26th birthday knocking down the Wall and still have a large chunk in my garage. During my February 1990 trip, you were still required to go through Checkpoints Alpha, Bravo and Charlie to get to East Berlin and still had to cross into East Berlin in class A or B uniform. You could, however, walk into no man's land and start knocking down sections of the Wall where ever you wanted to though. You could even unofficially walk into East Germany through the holes and talk to the DDR guards.

I have plenty of photos from that last trip.

Hi,

I'm interested in modelling for many years so I can tell you sth. about avaiability of kits in Poland.
First I was interested in planes- so without problems I could buy models of Russian Jak-1M, IL-2M3 or Polish LWS Czapla. To buy another models- like passenger aircrafts from East German Plasticard I had to spend several hours in queue. From time to time we could buy Matchbox kits- but almost all models were WW2 subject.
To buy models of another companies you had to visit modelling markets. You could buy there models of almost all companies and all subjects: including German WW2 and NATO. But prices of models were extremely high: for 1/72 scale Liberator from Revell you had to pay almost a half of my mother's salery (she was a teacher).
Also there were a problems with Polish customs officers. In late 80's I bought in Switzerland a model of F-15C (by Hasegawa in 1/72 scale). An officer in Polish airport said it was forbidden to import it to my country. But at least he allowed me to take it.

HTH

Michal