A few gems from afar

I got back from Berlin a couple of weeks ago but unfortunately I never did make it to Wolfsburg for my planned day trip to the Autostadt (aka the Volkswagen factory museum). Oh well, another time. It turns out that Germany is rather a large place and what I thought would be a short inexpensive journey was in reality an expensive lengthy one (the train ticket alone cost more than the return flight from Bristol to Berlin!). However, I did get to see a beautiful example of an early Beetle in the German history museum which helped sooth my disappointment of not going to the Autostadt!





As you can see from the pictures above it is a split rear screen model, from 1951 I believe, but there is one inharmonious feature that really bugged me (no pun intended)… The rear light clusters are from a 1962 > model! My friends were quick to point out that I needed to “get out more” and it would probably be healthy to calm down and “let it go”. Whilst I agreed to an extent with their dismissive opinion I still felt that a museum, especially one dedicated to German history, should have made the effort to ensure that the car was historically accurate! I mean, how could I possible trust the integrity of the other exhibits knowing that this particular example of iconic German design was in fact an amalgamation of inconsistent parts?!  Even so, it was still beautiful to behold. Here are a couple of commemorative coins that were produced to celebrate the 5 millionth and 10 millionth Beetles to roll of the production line:





Back in Blighty very little progress has been made on the bug lately. Occasionally I seize the opportunity to run outside with my power tools when the weather permits and it’s not dark! This general lack of activity means that I have nothing of interest to report.