Good to know, twisted. I just checked the air filter on the car a few minutes ago, and at first glance, I must say that it looks pretty clean. A few small bugs caught on top, but that's all I saw (and I took it out and tapped it a bit, too)... it was a bright yellow color on both sides. Obviously I'm not a professional, but it didn't look too dirty. I will probably just replace it, anyway, since it seems very easy to take out and put in again... and I'll ask a mechanic to replace the spark plugs, since I've had the car for a year and as you said, it's a maintenance item (how often should they be replaced, actually?).
One thing I did notice, though, is that on the top black plastic cover of the air filter, there seems to be a piece that cracked off/is missing from the side. So could that be the source of the problem? That the "seal" on top of the filter is not complete, since there is a hole along one of the sides of the cover (maybe a couple of inches long at most, half an inch high) The missing piece was inside, resting on top of the filter itself, so I removed that of course.
Doing some reading online, I also saw this about testing the MAF for a VW TDI... granted, a diesel, which mine is not... but I wondered if it was worth trying:
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Another test you can do is to warm up the car to normal operating temperature and put the transmission in neutral. Rev the engine up to redline. If the MAF is good, it should go all the way up to the rev limiter at 5100 rpm, if the MAF is bad, it will definitely not rev that high.
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So I did that just now, and the car definitely went up to 5100 rpm, no problem there. So the MAF might be alright, just maybe some cleaning?...