a girl with a secret past

So who is Tatyana? If you have read through some of my posts about Tatyana you would have already know the answer.

Tatyana was the feminine name I christened my Westfalia James Cook as in nautical tradition. I had never gave name to a vehicle before. So why change?

I have own a VW Vanagon Westfalia Camper for over 2 decades now. I have always appreciated the approach Westfalia takes to the design of their camper conversions. The approach it takes is always sensible, as a good naval architect would take to design a good sailboat. For a well design sailboat every elements of the design involves carefully deliberation of tradeoffs, and the skillful navigation around difficult constraints. All too often a good design is unappreciated by the untrained eyes. Good design seldom grabs attention. Good design often appears to be too simple and lacks of mind numbing features the marketing department like to tout. Good design is distilled. In the process of distillation all the frivolous elements are discarded while the good ones are honed and refined.

For a wind powered vessel the proof of the pudding is the ability to survive in the ocean independently for prolonged duration. When you are out in the ocean you cannot pull over on the road side if something goes wrong during increment weather. You want everything to be shipshape all the time. You don't want any frivolous cargo with you and conservation of the resources is critically important. If you examine carefully a camper built by Westfalia you would see these fundamental design attributes. These attributes are seldom found in American "RV". I see major flaw in typical American RVs. It is the inability to recognize the need to scale everything when you are building a mobile habitat that is much smaller than an average home. A typical RV design and execution is to see what more they can pile in. The material, furnishing, appliances, utilities, and plumbing chosen often are indiscernible from those that are used to build a home on land.

For North America Westfalia James Cooks are a rarity. There were 250 that were imported by Airstream sold as Airstream Westfalia. I'd often joke as they are one in a million in the US. US's population is about 250 million. In comparison there are more Citroen DSs in the US.

This compact motorhome (I prefer to call it a camper) was imported by Airstream between 2005 and 2007 (the financial go go years)  when the economic was blooming and Americans were feeling rich. Instead of taking the European design and only perform the necessary changes (like line voltage, fresh water supply fittings, propane fuel system) to suit the necessary regulatory (I infer) Airstream demanded a number of questionable changes. Some of these are implemented by Westfalia to Airstream's requirements (again I infer) while others are "upfitted" by Airstream once the vehicles arrived to this soil.

For the discriminating owners like myself I found most of these changes poorly conceived and executed. For the readers of my blog I have either written or allured to many in past posts. It has been a arduous journey for me to restore some of the most important changes back to or closer to spirit the European counterpart. This includes the cassette toilet and slimming down of the waste water discharge system.

To commemorate the returning of Tatyana closer to the Westfalia German root it is only fitting that I rechristen her with the name mythical name Brünnhilde. Brünnhilde is the heroine of Wagner's Der Ringdes Des Nibelungen. She is the most loved valkyrie daughter of Wotan the king of the gods. She is beautiful, devoting, brave, and virtuous. In the end her bravery would bring the end to the misguided gods.

So Tatyana is her alias and Brunnhilde is her real name from her secret past that is her Germanic heritage.

not long ago brunnhilde still donning her rags with her alias tatyana

brunnhilde's real identity