Day number 4. Tonight and tomorrow are going to run together for me, as I have made it to the Nuerburgring. I won’t want to leave.

Tonight I ate at the Pistenklaus Restaurante, owned by Sabine Schmitz’ parents. It’s not bad, and was full of ringers after their track time tonight.. and talking about tomorrow. I ended up sitting right next to a guy from the UK, and another guy who is an Aussie living in the UK, so we ended up talking for quite a while. Both had sort of decided to drive over from the UK at the last minute today. I so wish I could live in Europe, just for this

The town is packed full of Porsches. I’ve seen only a couple 911’s in Germany until today; now I’ve seen about 40, most of which are either GT2’s or GT3’s (many are RS’s as well). There are a ton of other very expensive cars here as well (surprise!). If it wasn’t so late I’d be down the hill taking night shots of GT3 RS’s on the side of the road, and of the parking lots full of 911’s, Lambo’s, and Ferrari’s.

I’m staying at Bergstube Hotel tonight. It’s just down the hill from the Nuerburg castle and overlooks the Eifel hills around the ring. I can’t see the ring from Nuerburg, but you sure can hear the cars on the first part of the track. It’s amazing. It’s a nice little hotel by the way. It’s run by a bunch of bike geeks who ride on the track whenever possible.

Tomorrow morning I’m meeting up with a few people from the finalgear.com forums & irc channel.. a sort of mini-ring meet. I’ll probably sneak a couple slow laps in the rental before heading back to rsr nurburg to pick up the Clio for the rest of the day. I get about 130km for the price, and I might squeeze in one or two extra laps if the traffic isn’t too heavy.

We’ll see though. I’m told that Thursday is some exotic car instruction day, where a bunch of rich idiots have flown their cars in from all over the world to have private instruction. So, because Wednesday is a full open day they’ll all be out driving like newbs in their expensive cars. The locals are expecting a couple crashes from that group, at the least. This means the course will be shut down a couple times.

Oh, the drive in to Nuerburg from the Autobahn is simply amazing. The only ‘negative’ is that the roads are just like every other B road in Germany: lots of speed changes, some small towns, and no where to pull off and take photos. The scenery is awesome though, and the roads are great. It’s a beautiful area; I could live here easily as long as I could get to work without too much hassle..

I did do other things today. I spent most of the day driving on back roads from Kassel to the Edertal area, bouncing from village to village while checking out the scenery. It was a fun drive, but it took way too long and used too much fuel. The car gets better mileage at 150kph cruising than it does at 50 – 100kph on the back roads. It’s a decent car for the Autobahn I suppose, but definitely not a good twisty road car. As with most newer Golfs & Jettas, this one needs better suspension. By the way, after seeing several mk6’s on the road now, I think only the GTI has any real improvement or significant change in the looks department. The biggest difference with the Golf is the headlights and taillights, and if you don’t catch those you think it’s a mk5. The biggest practical difference inside is the doorcard design, so that the power window switches are higher up (which I kind of like).

I stopped in Gudensburg earlier in the morning as well and spent quite a while there, climbing the hill in town to the site of a castle from around 1100 (if I remember correctly). The view was awesome, so I took a few shots I hope stitch into a panorama nicely.

One last note: only in Nuerburg would you have the waitress stop at your table to correct you on the names of corners on the nearby road course

I’ll post up photos tomorrow night or Wednesday morning. I won’t be in any hurry to leave this town.

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