"The Toaster" ~ Personal History and restoration

[otis_bartleh]

[Abscate]

Have fun and Be safe.

I still think the Toaster with the flag shot belonged in that article.

Flying over you this week on my way to a desert
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.ssS!

[Blue Baron]

[crofty]

Or I could just look at the vin tag.
My manual is hammered and I don't remember seeing anything written in it. Its the manual that came with the bus without a doubt. the Campmobile manual was in there are receipts going back to the early 70's.

[DadaCheese]

Not much to report from Germany today dealing with Split buses, but while in Koblenz, before going to Burg Eltz, saw this tablecloth material at a fabric store.

...would have got some, but was too expensive.

Although driving around in a Fiat Tipo, we're loving be in Germany on the well maintained roads and autobahn gain.
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Dada as in dadaism.
Cheese as in the stuff I love to eat.

[DadaCheese]

Made it over to our favorite toy store in Bad Nauheim yesterday here in Germany; plenty of split-window buses to choose from:

In the smaller train scale, there were over 30 different ones to choose from... we ended up buying this one:

There were also many larger models/toys, and 3-D puzzles too:

Personally, I am not a huge collector of VW toys, but with so many nice ones here to choose from, it would be hard to resist.

Lastly, we stopped and looked at that bay-window post bus down the street from our friends's house which is for sale.
There are more pictures of it in my gallery showing a bit more, and a few of its trouble spots. As far as I can tell it is a genuine post bus.

Off to the large Frankfurt Saturday swap-meet this morning... who knows if we will find any VW-related toys or junk?
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Dada as in dadaism.
Cheese as in the stuff I love to eat.

[DadaCheese]

We are in Uelzen, Germany, where our college German professor has returned to her ancestral home (the house her great grandfather built) after retiring from the California State University system.

Close to here is the factory for Werhaus, which makes wonderful products. In downtown Uelzen is a store of their products... we went a little crazy and bought several items such ad the 8-pack VW bus beer holder among other things...

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Dada as in dadaism.
Cheese as in the stuff I love to eat.

[DadaCheese]

Excited...

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Dada as in dadaism.
Cheese as in the stuff I love to eat.

[swiss_bulli]

Awesome and you also got good weather for your trip!
Are you still around for the Maikaefertreffen on 1st of May or do you leave earlier?

Cheers
Nick

[DadaCheese]

[otis_bartleh]

Looks like you're having a great trip, very cool!
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-Adam
'59 Mango Bus
'11 Golf TDI 6-speed
'69 Bug

[DadaCheese]

Hasn't been time to post about Wolfsburg, but I'll write up much more once we are back in the states... here, however, are just two quick photos from the Stiftungs Museum... more later, we hope everyone is out enjoying their buses this weekend.

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Dada as in dadaism.
Cheese as in the stuff I love to eat.

[otis_bartleh]

Very cool! Not sure when you're back, Madera is this Sunday...
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-Adam
'59 Mango Bus
'11 Golf TDI 6-speed
'69 Bug

[62DoKaGuy]

[DadaCheese]

[DadaCheese]

Back from Germany...

There's lots of rambling thoughts and things to say about our wonderful return to Germany where we visited friends for a couple weeks.

For this post, however, I'll try to keep it down to just a bit about the brief, and wonderful, visit we had to Wolfsburg.

Yes, yes, I know there is a bus museum about 45 minutes drive south-west of Hanover http://www.bullimuseum.eu/, but our plan was to visit the FIRST VW factory; Wolfsburg:

There is a LOT to do and see at Volkswagen's Autostadt https://www.autostadt.de/en/start/, but as Kathy and I are more about/into air-cooled VWs, we wanted to see whatever we could of more historic significance.

Besides the nice areas for strolling between the buildings, and the dealership there at the Autostadt, there's also exhibits, places to eat, etc.

There's an entrance fee for the Autostadt (unless you happen to be picking up a new car at the dealership there), and a few other added tours and expenses that you can tack on too.

WELL worth recommending is the great tour of the VW factory its self, which is in/on a specialized tram bus that brings through a couple miles (up floors, down floors, etc.) of the working factory. One cool part of the tour is that while you are outside of the factory, the side doors of the tram (a three-person-wide tram) are closed, but once inside, the tram doors open so that you have a full sensory experience of being there in the factory, on the factory floor with all the smells, noise, and everything that the workers experience. All the while the robotics, machines and people are working away.
Regretfully you can't take any photos during the bus tour, but you can on the boat that brings you over TO the bus tour:

There's a tour guide on the tram with a live microphone rattling off an impressive amount of facts and figures as well as factory history by heart.

Back at the Autostadt, besides the two high-rise columns of car models...

...there's a building dedicated to each of the various brands under VW's umbrella.

As if the Autostadt is the Teletubby-land, we also saw these cute Nutrias (a mammal that resembles a beaver, but have a rat-like tail) hanging out in the grassy areas:

We went into the dealership building where folks were picking up their cars for the first time. A big electronic display lists the new owner's names and their scheduled appointments. Also dropped into the dealership's swag shop:

I'd love to say that we spent all day at the Factory and the Autostadt, but it isn't true. I really wanted to see/go to the Stiftung AutoMuseum Volkswagen https://www.automuseum-volkswagen.de/en.html which is about two miles away, and concentrates on the history of VW and Volkswagen automobiles.

SO MANY CARS. From the common, to works of "car art", to test models and and everything in-between.

When you request your VW's "Birth Certificate" this is the place that fulfills that order.
...I had never ordered mine, and I had a small secret hope that if I ordered it while there that it might take less than the typical 6+ months to get it.

The staff at the museum were very kind and helpful, and I did order it, to which they said that perhaps I'd get it in October if I am lucky.

The manager of that department told me that due to the Internet, they receive over 3,000 requests per month. They just don't have enough staff for the certificates to be done faster.

For a fan of VWs, being at the Stiftungs museum is like being a kid locked into a candy shop alone. We saw only three other patrons in the museum while we there (and based on the personalized tour they were having, I believe someone from VW had brought them there), and three other guys who came in and asked the receptionist if they could be allowed, free of charge, to just look for 5-minutes because they had a train to catch.

"You won't really be able to see anything in five minutes," she told them.
"We know; we know, but five is better than none," they responded.

She let them in for free and the zipped around very quickly oohing and aahing and then left.

Kathy and I took more time, and I took a lot of hap-hazzard snapshot photos as usual.

There are a LOT more photos, here's a Samba link searching for them:
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_search.php...t_dir=DESC

The trip to Wolfsburg was one of many high-points of this trip to Germany, and naturally I wish we had a bit more time there, but next trip I'll make it a point to make it to the Bulli-Museum in Oldendorf, Germany.

When/if/as I have time, I might do another post about our general VW-related experiences during this trip.

If I can convince Kathy, we may take the Toaster on Sunday to Madera, CA, where the "Spring Fling" VW meet is (listed under Community/Shows for this weekend, April 27th-29th, 2018).

Thanks for taking a look at all this, and if you ever have the chance to visit (as I am sure many of you have) the Autostadt and Stiftungs Museum in Wolfsburg, then GO. Well worth it.
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Dada as in dadaism.
Cheese as in the stuff I love to eat.

[DadaCheese]

Some final semi-VW related and random thoughts about our visit to Germany in April.

It had been nine years since we had the chance to visit Germany, so when we got a very cheap flight and scrapped together a total of 14 days to be away from work, we went.

We have a great many friends in Germany, some that I've known for 30 years, others from when we studied in Mainz, also our German professor who retired from California and moved back to her home town, as well as other friends we made within the past few years...

We couldn't see everyone, but we did see roughly 90% of everyone.

Thanks to our friend Sascha, we had a free rental car for the two weeks. A 2018 5-door diesel Fiat Tipo. It drove great and we drove it a great many kilometers all over northern and Western Germany.

On the Autobahn, the fastest I dared to try driving was 178 km/hr (110 mph). Could I have gone faster? Sure, but I'm used to driving between 60 and 65 on the freeway in The Toaster; I don't claim to be a race driver.

VWs.
Germany is, of course, littered with Volkswagens. Not the lovely air-cooled models that all of us love here on TheSamba, but so many newer models that I didn't didn't even know what I was looking at half the time.

Japanese cars that are common here in California (Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, etc.) are rarely seen these days in Germany.

This time around I noticed less Fords and less Opels then in the past. Compared to other major brands, they seem to have been loosing popularity in the market.

One of VW's models that seems to be fairly popular is the smart-car sized model the "up!".

We made it out to the big flea market in Frankfurt (am Main) that we used to love going to when we were students. It's along the museum row next to the Main river, and you can find all manner of things. Watching people haggle is half the fun of being there.

The Split-Window toy bus in the collage below (1:24 scale) is nothing I needed or wanted, particularly when the vendor wanted 25 Euros for it (roughly $30). I wasn't about to haggle for something I didn't want. The Police bug toy, however, was 2 Euros ($2.43) with no haggling, so I picked it up for our friend and neighbor Volksfire.

On the road, and street legal, we saw a total of four air-cooled VWs (five if you include that Bay-Window Post Bus that is for sale in our friend's town).

This Super Beettle:

This 1968 on the Autobahn:

...and two split window buses that I regret we couldn't take photos of. Both were immaculate; one was a blue and white Standard, the other was a custom orange Double-Cab.

VW collectibles we got for ourselves included this eight-pack beer carrier from Werkhaus...

...and postcards from the Stiftung AutoMuseum Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, a nice Karman Ghia shirt for Kathy from Wolfsburg's Autostadt, a VW toy here and there, but we didn't pick up much else that was VW.

I do like older signs (to decorate our garage's bathroom in California), and I got a bargain on this wall-mount Fire Extinguisher sign, and our friend Julia bought us a "VW Parking Only" sign that we had also always wanted for our garage.

...I have a few hundred pictures of our travels, of architecture, Berlin, all that we saw, our friends, etc., but I'm trying to keep this post down to just a few last VW items.

My friend of over 30 years, Jochen, collects licence plates. Although he is German, and living in Germany, he knows more about American licence plates than anyone I know. He is also, naturally, well versed about German plates too. He said that if I posted on here any of the pictures of his collection, that I could say that if you are looking for either specific-style/era American plates, or German, he can help.
PM me if you need something along those lines whether it's information, finding something, or even just getting a ball-park figure of what something is worth since at VW meets you'll likely pay too much for something that in the licence plate collecting world is a lot cheaper.

These few shown on his basement wall are about 1/70th of the plates he owns, and he networks with collectors around the world.

Wish we could have stayed another month (or more) but we are looking forward to all the upcoming meets and camping trips with The Toaster now that we are back.
_________________
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Dada as in dadaism.
Cheese as in the stuff I love to eat.

[otis_bartleh]

Very cool man!!
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-Adam
'59 Mango Bus
'11 Golf TDI 6-speed
'69 Bug

[BulliBill]

I'm so glad to see that you enjoyed your German adventures, and that you got to visit the Siftung VW Automuseum. I love that place, been to the Siftung at least seven or eight different times on trips over to Der Fatherland. Cool and under-appreciated VW Museum! Welcome back and thanks for the nice postcard!

Bill & Kathryn Bowman
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I'm looking for these license plate frames for my fleet:
Coeur D'Alene - Lake Shore Volkswagen
Mission VW - San Fernando
Thornton VW - Stockton

Thanks for any help!

[mr. lang]

Cool story. You have seen more German history than I did.