[...]

After the wall came down I spent some time with a physicist from East
Berlin.

He told me of a Czech bath manufacturing facility, whose foundry produced
iron baths for the entire Soviet Union.

No other baths were on offer anywhere [that is to say, without *special*
people importing them from West Germany] despite the demand for ceramic
ones, and indeed, for the new plastic shower-tubs wieghing one tenth of
the bath units.

Don't you realize that you weaken your case when you grasp at
straws like this. Your 'physicist' was obviously having fun pulling
your leg: Go out and try to buy a ceramic bathtub sometime.

What I don't understand is why, in view of the innumerable real flaws
and idiocies of the lamented 'Social Democracies', you need to
tell such apocryphal anecdotes.

Of course, some such anecdotes, though completely unbelievable,
turned out to be true. Remember the one about the $1000 toilet seats
and the $600 hammers?


This guy [who

I expect you meant to say 'whom', I suppose.

I shall call Bernd

Needless to say, you must protect his privacy...

] worked in a photodiode semiconductor factory in East Berlin as its head
scientist, and his unit produced for the entire Soviet 'Aerospace'
Industry - but that is natural - you don't need lots of electro-optical
facilities making silicon detectors.

But he drove a Trabant car - a 'trabi', which was not the only car
produced behind the curtain, but the only one ordinary people could get.
The black market in trabi parts was enormous, and actually far more
expensive than the officially manufactured ones, which... you are guessing
right... were in limitied supply, despite massive demand from Trabant
owners ...

Shall I tell you a story or two about 3 automobile manufacturers that
operate
from a formerly great U.S. city that now looks like Berlin did in 1945 and
has
been abondoned by Whitey?