2013 retrospective Pt 2 ... Kulmbach - the best event of my year on the road ...

Yes, I managed to slip away to Germany for a week and ... I went to a toy soldier show!  

(Kulmbach seen from the Plassenburg)

Down there, ringed in yellow is the beer hall that houses the Zinnfigurenborse ... up here, in the castle from which I took the picture is the largest toy soldier Museum in the world (so they say, 350,000 figures, so they say) ...

The Museum is there the whole time, the toy soldier show (tin figure mart) just 3 days in August every 2 years.   I had waited for the opportunity to combine the visit.

I love flats, but find the choice, styles, prices, availability etc. all quite bewildering and impenetrable ... which is why, though still daunting, this is what you want ...

(one corner of the vast zinnfiguren trade hall)

That's probably about a quarter of it.   The vast majority of all those trade stands are selling 30mm flats ... and once you get your head round it all, it's easy enough to buy as much as you want at prices that seemed pretty good to me with no shipping to pay (and nearly everything in free plentiful supply - though I managed to find some reeds for my Egyptian project that needed to be sent on*).

If only we had one of these in England (say, a couple of times a year!)

My original report is here, and my look at the Plassenburg Museum is here.

Here are a few more pictures that failed to make the original cut ...

(some exhibits from the competition)

(a renaissance display from the trade fair)

(back in the Museum)

(a different shot crossing the Berezina)

(a rare Great War diorama)

(details of the New World diorama)

(some vintage boxed sets)

(detail from the Luethen battlescape)

(Prussians)

... and finally the Museum's reconstructed workshop of legendary A Ochels (Kieler/Kilia)

*********

For a change to finish, here are some Guyler/misc elephants tidied and restored by me ...

Back on the road soon ...

*concerning which I can also report that although they took a few weeks (I think the traders all go on holiday once the show is put to bed) everything I ordered turned up - as it happens before I had jad a chance to use any of it