International Spy Museum -- Annual Parade of Trabants (2012):
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Description of Pictures: Sixth Annual Parade of Trabants:
The ONLY Trabant Rally in the United States!
Where were you when the Wall fell? The Berlin Wall is long gone, but one Cold War icon is still chugging away—the Trabant. Despite their questionable performance and smoky two-stroke engines, these little cars are now affectionately regarded as a symbol of East Germany and the fall of Communism. Trabants are a rarity here, but on November 10 some of the finest examples in the US will chug their way to the International Spy Museum to celebrate our Sixth Annual Parade of Trabants. Drop in to view the vintage cars, which will be parked in front of the Museum on F Street, NW, and enter a raffle to win a ride in a Trabant. While the cars are on display, experts will be on hand to answer questions about Trabants, the Cold War, and Communism, while the Blaskapelle Alte Kameraden German Band provides festive music. Stasi training films will reveal the East German Secret Police’s techniques, and you can check out our own Checkpoint Charlie.
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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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TRABAN_121110_027.JPG: What is a Trabant?
* A car made from 1957 - 1991
* Built in Communist Zwichau, East Germany
* The most common vehicle in East Germany before the fall of Communism
* Made of cotton/resin fiber called Duroplast because of a shortage of steel
* Powered by a 500 or 600 cc 2 cylinder, 2 stroke engine
* Top speed approximately 60 mph
* The car's smoky exhaust produced pollution with nine times the hydrocarbons and five times the carbon monoxides of the average 2007 European car
* Now a symbol of East Germany and the fall of Communism
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2012 photos: Equipment this year: My mainstays were the Fuji S100fs, Nikon D7000, and the new Fuji X-S1. I also used an underwater Fuji XP50 and a Nikon D600. The first three cameras all broke this year and had to be repaired.
Trips this year:
three Civil War Trust conferences (Shepherdstown, WV, Richmond, VA, and Williamsburg, VA),
a week-long family reunion cruise of the Caribbean,
another week-long family reunion in the Wisconsin Dells (with lots of in-transit time in Ohio and Indiana), and
my 7th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including side trips to Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon, etc).
Ego strokes: I had a picture of Miss DC, Ashley Boalch, published in the Washington Post. I had a photograph of the George Segal San Francisco Holocaust memorial used as the cover of Quebec Francais (issue 165). Not being able to read French, I'm not entirely sure what the article is about but, hey! And I guess what could be considered to be a positive thing, my site is now established enough that spammers have noticed it and I had to block 17,000 file description postings for Viagra and whatever else..
Number of photos taken this year: just below 410,000.
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