Would You Like Fries With That?

You’ll note my previous commentary on the spelling of Nuremberg/Nürnberg – and because umlauts don’t exist in the English (Australian) alphabet I’ve also seen Nuernberg (ü being pronounced ue, sort of, unless you’re from Queensland (guilty) and all vow noises are just munted and roll together – it’s a beaut dialect but I digress). So, with three different spellings, and the aforementioned inability to annunciate vowels in my mother tongue you can’t entirely blame me for thinking that Nürburg was the same place.

Only after I had booked my absolutely stunning accommodation in Nuremberg and my absolute bucketlist, must-do, ride or die racing experience in Nürburg did my trivia friends Pat, who is German, and Greta who confirmed on Google Maps inform me they are not in fact the same place.

Nürburg is closer to Luxemburg than it is to Nuremberg. Closer to Frankfurt, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Bonn – literally anywhere but Nuremberg. So now, having paid for accommodation, about $400, almost 400kms away from a track I’d paid almost $600 to drive I decided to double down and pay another $500 to rent a car to drive there and back in a day.

I chose the absolute cheapest car I could find, a manual VW Touareg without a GPS, was happily upgraded to an automatic BMW Series 2 Coupe with a GPS (huzzah!). And then I walked 2ks to the wrong depot to walk a further 3ks to the right depot before picking up the car and leaving Nuremberg at 0800 to drive the just over 4 hours to Nürburg. On the phone to my bestie who kept me company for most of the drive manically laughing at this new development in my already poor sense of direction.

Somewhat hypocritically considering my outwards love of Porsche and my mild disdain for BMW this was actually a sick car to drive, and dare I say easier to get to speed than the Porsche had been. I think this is like comparing a spaceship to a tractor mechanically though so let’s not get too excited. The autobahn on this route, unlike the A8, is not speed limited and so I comfortably sat between 140 and 150 in the middle land with about as much effort as cruising at 80 in Australia. Going for the continuous leap-frog method meant that a lot of the time I was driving closer to 170 and 180 – the hire company did say please don’t go over 210 – overtaking folk, and once coming back into the middle lane I had to stand on the breaks as a horse float doing 100 decided it was time for Dobin to ride in the centre. My soul left my body but somehow between sheer reflects and the handling of the BMW I live to write about this now and Dobin will see another sunrise.

Despite doing my best to beat the Google estimate (and I have no idea how you give a drive like that an estimate when you can go as fast as you want) I didn’t reach Nürburg, and you may have guessed the destination, the ring, until 12:30. And then at the information desk the woman asked if I’d received confirmation of my lap booking. I showed her a screenshot and told her that no, I didn’t have an email before she said she’s posted my paper ticket to Australia (helpful). She looked it up on the postal tracker and (thank God) it had got lost. So, she printed me a new voucher and told me to book online. The voucher is for the AUG to NOV season, and all the sessions were fully booked out. Going back to the desk wanting to cry but plastering a huge smile on my face I explained that as it was their error (thank God for lost mail), and the vouchers was for AUG to NOV which is fully booked, and as I was going home to Australia prior to DEC when the track I think is closed anyway, isn’t there something you can do? She called a colleague who told me to come to the Devil’s Diner at 6pm and she’d put me on the list.

It was by then 1 pm and I had not had a coffee or eaten so I practically inhaled a Redbull and a dry ass pork rissole on a dry bun with some mustard that in my deprived state I was willing to nominate for a Michelan award before chugging a litre of water and getting myself a second sipping Redbull. Delightful. Human again, I walked back to the info desk, huge smile back in place and asked for a ticket backstage while I waited for my turn on the track.

My time a the Nürburgring was epic and once I left the Nordschleife pale, sweating and feeling like my stomach was only just making the corner of Döttinger Höhe some ten minutes after my wobbly legs had got me back to the BMW it was time to drive back to Nuremberg before midnight and the car turned back into a pumpkin, or worse, I was charged another days rent.

With 30 minutes to spare, I shoved the rental keys into the box, hoped the tube (was serenaded by a bloke who’d pissed himself – he was at least singing INXS) and made it home still somewhat nauseated. It was after all that effort a good day.