Grüße aus Deutschland! Dies ist Teil 1 einer dreiteiligen Serie. In diesem ersten Abschnitt erzähle ich Ihnen, was es brauchte, um „dort anzukommen“. Wie Trackchasing in Deutschland aussieht, sehen Sie auch an zwei internationalen Trackchasing-Stationen. Teil 2 und 3 behandeln Tourneen durch Berlin, Dresden, Prag und zwei weitere Trackchasing-Besuche ... in der Tschechischen Republik.
Translation:
Greetings from Germany! This is Part 1 of a three-part series. In this first segment, I’ll tell you about what it took to “get there”…to Germany that is. You’ll also see what trackchasing in Germany looks like at two international trackchasing stops. Parts 2 and 3 will cover touring Berlin, Dresden, Prague and two more trackchasing visits…in the Czech Republic.
The reader’s main points of interest.
I hope you find today’s post interesting and entertaining on three different fronts. I’m thinking that folks read my newsletters for one or more reasons. Those might be:
Financial ideas
Travel experiences
Racing adventures
This post will cover each of those areas. I hope readers find something that meets their interests! Carol and I will be traveling to Germany and the Czech Republic.
Of course, I never forget my trackchasing fans. I’ve got videos from each of the two German racetracks we visited. Check it out.
German autocross racing from Sudring…See VW bugs battle it out!
Motorsport Arena Oschersleben, Oschersleben, Germany…lots of action from this racetrack
A little bit of everything.
I’ll cover the economics and logistics of taking a vacation like this. I’ll also show you the exciting sights and sounds that are the heartbeat of a nearly two-week European vacation. Finally, my racing fans will be able to see what small track racing is like in Germany and the Czech Republic. We’ll also visit the Czech Republic’s most prominent former World Formula 1 track.
I would expect that readers might have one of three reactions to these topics. First, maybe everything I’m sharing will be brand new to them and if so, I think that would be a fun read. Some folks will see what Carol and I decided to do and conclude that that’s pretty much how they might make and take one of these vacations. Finally, there are going to be some people who look at how we did the trip and come to the conclusion that they would never ever in their wildest dreams do it the way we did. All reactions are certainly fair game. Ready to get started?
Too much planning or too little advance planning?
I do just enough pre-planning for these trips to get us there and get us started. I never want to pre-plan things so strongly that we are absolutely committed to one idea or another and can’t make a change on the fly if some better idea comes up. There is certainly a balance between setting things up in advance, so as not to be locked out of some major parts of the trip as compared to being able to do things on the fly, which I often find to be the most fun of any trip we take. Just like the sign says…overplanning can kill the magic!
Why Germany and the Czech Republic?
How did we pick our travel location of Germany and the Czech Republic? These trips always get their genesis from my hobby of trackchasing. I’m always on the lookout for racetracks I have never visited. For this trip, we will be gone for 12 days. I expect we will be at racetracks for a grand total of about 12 hours during the entire trip. Racetracks dictate where we go in the world. Beyond that our vacation is “sort of” like everyone else’s vacation.
We’ve done this before.
I first started going to Europe to see racing back in 1999 with a visit to the United Kingdom. When this trip is finished, I will have seen racing at 164 locations all over Europe. If I averaged seeing three tracks on each trip that would mean I have “crossed the pond” more than 50 times to Europe seeing racing and touring the countryside. Of course, Carol and I have made our own separate trips to Europe without racing being involved another 10 or 20 times. Our first-ever trip to Europe came in the late 70s. We went to Paris for a week as guests of the Holiday Inn hotel chain. That was a long time ago when France was still using the French franc!
Where will the racing be?
Before I can commit to one of these long-distance trips or even a domestic trip, I’ll need to confirm that the racetracks are having a race. That’s much more difficult in countries where English is not the primary language.
Locals will know a heck of a lot more about the details than I will.
I will always try to search for people who live locally. I’ll find those folks through the internet one way or another. A local can “speak the language” and translate things back to me. Several people whom I had never met and likely will never meet helped me develop a trackchasing plan.
How do we GET there?
Once I get the race dates set, I’ll look into what kind of airfare will be best for us. Our son is a captain for a major airline in the U.S. I can use some of his benefits when I travel in North America. However, when we trackchase outside of our continent, I’ll be finding an airplane ride pretty much as you do.
I am partial to American Airlines when we travel to Europe. During my business career, I flew more than 6,000,000 miles with them. If you think of an average flight as being about 1,000 miles long six million frequent flyer miles is a lot of airplane rides!
All that travel gave me an elevated status with AA. Just when I retired in 2002 American Airlines bestowed lifetime platinum status on me. That was a more than fortunate happening and some excellent timing. With that status American Airlines will let us pre-reserve seats in premium economy class, our checked bags will be free, and we will have complimentary use of the American Airlines Flagship airport lounges during the entire trip. Even if we pay a little more for a ticket with American all of those perks make AA the best value in most cases.
We never pay for business class or first class when flying to Europe. I know that some of my friends do. I think it’s one thing if you are traveling to Europe once a year or once every five years and you want to buy premium travel airline seats. However, when this trip is finished, I will have spent 70 days in 2022 outside of the country. That is fairly normal for me. I can’t afford to fly business class or first class on a frequent basis when I am making as many trips as I do. Additionally, and not everyone will agree with this, I just don’t think that business class or first class is a good value when it costs 3-4 times as much as flying in economy class.
The best way to get from point A to point B after we arrive?
I’ll also have a car reserved in advance of any of these big trips. Normally I will go with Auto Europe, which is one of my favorite travel partners of all. However, on this trip, I found a good rate and package with National Car Rental. National is the rental car company I use almost exclusively inside the United States.
I know a lot of travelers never rent a car. They fly into big cities and if they need to move around use trains and buses. I like that kind of travel as well. However, a trackchasing trip almost always requires a car. Usually, the racetracks are located outside of big cities in rural areas where trains and buses don’t go.
Standardization, to a degree, is worthwhile.
We have a bit of a “routine” European travel schedule for these trips. Carol doesn’t like to be away from home for more than two weeks at a time. That being the case, I developed just for her the “classic” European vacation. How does that work?
The classic trip calls for us to leave Los Angeles on Thursday and arrive in Europe on Friday. Then we will go to the races somewhere on Saturday and Sunday. Next, we’ll tour the area from Monday through Friday. We will be back at some racetracks the next Saturday and Sunday before we fly home on Monday. Of course, we will only be at each of the racetracks for about three hours. This gives us plenty of time to tour on our race days as well when there is something worthwhile to see.
We had just enough of the trip planned for us to leave our modest seaside cottage in San Clemente, California. It was time to head out on a long, fun, and laidback 12-day trip. The airfare was covered. The rental car was reserved. We had a hotel reservation for the first night of the trip. Off we went.
Thursday, October 6, 2022
This is minorly weird.
My day began at 4 a.m. with 30 minutes of walking in my home gym called the “Ranlay Event Center”. My goal is to walk 4 miles or more every day. I’ve been doing that for eight months without missing a day.
All of my walking must be done during California’s Pacific time zone 24-hour day. Where we were going in Europe was going to be a nine-hour time difference from California. That meant that my “walking day” in Europe would run from 9 a.m. until 9 a.m. European time which was midnight to midnight in California. I do it this way because my Apple iPhone calculates all of my mileage based on the time zone that my phone is in. I’m in California most of the time. I don’t want to be credited with 6 miles of walking one day and 2 miles the next when my phone converts walking done in Europe back to “California time”. I have to make sure I am walking 4 miles each and every day during California hours. I know. Anal, right?
Leaving the house is always an exciting time even after so many of these trips.
It’s a 65-mile drive from our house to the Los Angeles International Airport. Carol and I have a routine that has worked for us for years. It goes like this.
I drive to the airport terminal and drop Carol and our checked bags at the curb. She only has to manage the bags for about 50 steps to get things checked in. While she is doing that, I drive about a mile back to our airport parking garage.
Airport parking…one of my best travel values.
Airport parking can be expensive if you travel as I do. I would guess that the average price to park at LAX is $15-$20 per day. Believe it or not, my car is at the airport on an average of 15-18 days each and every month and each and every year. You can run the numbers and see how airport parking could run into a very large expense. Luckily, I have a special deal with a parking garage at LAX. My covered garage is about a mile from the terminal. For just $75 a month I can park my car there for as much or little as I want. It’s one of the best values I have.
Once I have parked my car at the airport garage, although I could take a shuttle, I always walk. I know the one-mile walk will take about 20 minutes. I never know if the shuttle will come in five minutes or twenty-five minutes. Plus, this is an easy way to get my steps in. By the time I arrive at the airline terminal, Carol has checked the bags and is relaxing and awaiting my arrival. Like I say we’ve done it this way for years. I think the secret sauce to this plan is that both Carol and I are getting two things done at the same time.
Travel convenience is always a winner.
Carol and I both have TSA and Global Entry memberships. I recognize that I travel a lot. I understand that not everyone reading this travels nearly as much as I do or very much at all. If you are going to travel a few times a year, I highly recommend the TSA pre-check option. With this, you get through airport security much faster. You won’t have to take off your shoes or pull out your liquids and laptops.
Global Entry is for international travelers. I’m going to highly recommend Global Entry as well. Global Entry gets you back into the country from your foreign trip quickly. They’ve now gone to a retina scan that lets us clear U.S. Border Control in a matter of ten seconds or so. Others are standing in lines that might delay their movement by as much as an hour. These programs need to be renewed every five years. The cost is $100. Our credit card covers the $100 renewal every five years, so how could we not go for this benefit?
Airline lounges are very much worth it and even more so when there is no extra charge.
Today, once we were inside the terminal, we immediately went to the American Airlines Flagship airport lounge. American has two different kinds of lounges. One is the Admiral’s Club lounge and one is the Flagship lounge. The Flagship lounge, which is what we get on these trips, is better by a factor of several.
On this particular morning, we enjoyed a very upscale buffet-style selection of breakfast foods, including several entrées. They were even cooking up, individualized breakfast quesadillas. Those were hard to pass up.
I mentioned that I hold special status with American Airlines. In addition to free bags and confirmed upgraded economy seating, and the Admiral’s Club we are among the first to be able to board the plane. That’s always important because we want to make sure there is room for our carry-on luggage.
How do we get from Point A to Point B to Point C?
For this particular trip, we would fly from Los Angeles to Dallas, Texas to Frankfurt, Germany. The flight to Dallas would be about three hours long while the flight from Dallas to Germany would be around 10 hours.
I’m 6‘3” tall. Despite being that height, the premium economy class gives me plenty of legroom for a long flight in coach. I always bring my iPad for my A/V entertainment. Carol goes with the at your seat American Airlines provided entertainment. We get opposite aisle seats. I wouldn’t want anyone to think of our planning as rigid. We’ve just done much of this so often that we know what we like.
This trip would have us leaving at 9 a.m. California time. We would arrive at about 9 a.m. in Germany the next day. During that time, we would lose nine hours in time zone changes, and another 15 hours would be taken up with flight times and weight times while connecting in Dallas. When you’re traveling to Europe from the west coast the first 24 hours can go by pretty fast.
Friday, October 7, 2022.
One hand tied behind my back?
I was traveling with a significant handicap on this trip. I am an iPhone user. I use something called “voice to text” about every three minutes with my phone. For some reason, that feature was not working. This was a major inconvenience for me during the entire trip. I couldn’t get the phone repaired until I got home. I was pretty bummed about this inconvenience. Carol became my typist frequently as we motored up and down European highways.
Over the years, clearing foreign passport control stations and getting our bags, and getting out of the airport has gotten so much faster than in the past. When we landed in Frankfurt, Germany, clearing passport control took less than five minutes. By the time we were admitted to Germany our luggage was waiting for us when we arrived. We checked two bags in total.
A big part of my life is finding a strategy that works.
I have what I think is a particularly good travel strategy for these longer trips. I use a rolling travel bag that I carry with me on the plane. This bag carries three or four days’ worth of clothing. I will also check a huge bag with all of the clothes, shoes, large toiletries, umbrellas, and the like for the remainder of the trip in this big bag.
The “big bag” will be placed in the back of the rental car. It will never ever leave there until the trip is finished and we are headed home. I use the big bag as a “distribution center”. After the first couple of days of our trip, my dirty clothes will go into a bag in the back of the car. I then take another two or three days’ worth of clean clothes and move them from the big bag to the small bag. That way, I’m never inconvenienced with having to move that large bag into and out of hotels or having to lug the big bag around. I’m pretty proud of this particular logistical strategy.
On the other hand, Carol thinks this idea is in a word, “stupid”. She hauls all of her stuff into the hotel every night. She weighs about 100 pounds. Her luggage weighs about 200 pounds. People see her luggage dwarfing her in size. Then…they look at me. I can see what they are thinking. They are thinking “Why doesn’t this big guy help this helpless little girl who is struggling with the luggage that is about to knock her over”. I want to take the time to tell them about the “big bag theory” but by that time Carol has tilted to a near-falling position and I have to jump in to help her out. If only she would listen to me…but then you all know how that goes with your own spouse/significant other, right?
And now for the rental car!
As you might imagine, I have a preferred status based on my usage patterns with National Car Rental. Today they upgraded us to what the rental agent called a “station wagon”. I might’ve called it a hatchback. What kind of car did we get?
We ended up with a BMW Series 3 rental car. Getting a good rental car was a very important aspect of our trip. We would end up driving our car 2,800 kilometers. We would spend a few hours on average in the car each day.
The BMW was nearly brand new and came with only 6,000 km on the odometer. If you’re not familiar with the metric system just know you can convert miles to kilometers by multiplying miles by .625. It was a bit of a challenge moving with our bags down into the bowels of the rental car center at the Frankfurt airport. Nevertheless, we finally found the car. We loaded all of our luggage and hopped into the car’s interior.
Not everything goes smoothly no matter how much you plan and how much experience you have.
For the next 10 minutes in nearly complete darkness, we attempted to change the car’s video screen from being 100% in German language to English. That was difficult to do. Despite our frustration and the fact that it might’ve been 10 a.m. in Frankfurt but it was 1 a.m. in Los Angeles Carol and I could only smile at our challenge.
Finally, we figured it out enough to get the video screen to show things in English. Then for the remainder of the trip, we would learn another thing or two every day about how this car worked. Some of this stuff requires a good deal of patience!
Expensive fuel with roads as smooth as a baby’s butt!
As I mentioned in the 10 days of having the car, we would end up driving 2,800 km or about 1,800 miles. Fuel was expensive. I’ll tell you exactly how expensive it was later on. This BMW three-series “station wagon” was one of the quietest and smoothest riding cars I’ve ever ridden in. The ride was aided by the near-perfect highways of both Germany and the Czech Republic.
The first hotel of the trip!
Tomorrow’s racing was going to take place in Neuenburg, Germany. That being the case, we secured a hotel for tonight in Neuenburg itself. What a beautiful little tourist town. It’s small with just 8,000 people. Neuenburg originated as a village around a castle built by the House of Veihingen in the 12th century.
Our hotel was located just off the main square where there were multiple restaurants and outdoor eateries and bars. I found this place using Hotels.com. It fully lived up to and exceeded its high rating.
When was the last time you slept on a twin bed?
At home, Carol and I sleep on a California king bed with a Temper-Pedic mattress. It is difficult, if not impossible to find a king-sized bed at most hotels in Europe. You might get a queen and more often you might get a double bed. That doesn’t really work for us.
If we can’t get a king-sized bed in Europe, we would just as soon go with two twin beds. You would be hard-pressed to find a hotel room in America that offers twin beds of any kind. Based upon my experience of traveling throughout Europe, I would say that the two twin-bed layout is the most common of any bed option.
We spent the afternoon in Neuenburg, eating some gelato and just taking in the sights. The weather, for October, was perfect. I highly recommend you take a look at the photo album which focuses on our stay here. In the evening, we went to a German-style restaurant. The eatery was a three-minute walk from our hotel. We dined on steak and salad with the steak being smothered in garlic butter. When dinner was finished, I still had a few steps to complete my four miles for the day. I walked Carol back to the hotel. Off I went. I passed by several small restaurants where people, likely locals in the main, were enjoying their friends and their favorite restaurants. Our first full day in Europe had worked out really well.
Take a look at this photo album which will keep you up to date with what had transpired so far.
Getting to Germany and our first day on the ground.
Saturday, October 8, 2022.
It was time to go trackchasing.
Today we will be trackchasing in Neuenburg, Germany. Going into this trip. I had only seen racing at four different tracks in Germany in my life. One of those was the famous Hockenheimring road course that Carol and I visited just a couple of months ago.
By way of explanation, the hobby of “trackchasing” is really just a collecting hobby. Maybe you collect coins or stamps or Barbie dolls. I’m just collecting experiences of trying to see racing at as many different auto-racing tracks as I can. To date, that has gone well. I have seen racing in 86 countries and 2,839 racetracks.
Is trackchasing a racing or a travel hobby?
I think I could just as easily explain that trackchasing is a TRAVEL hobby. Trackchasing takes me all over the United States and the world. So far in 2022 I’ve seen racing in 20 states and 10 countries along with two Canadian provinces and one Mexican state. Is trackchasing a racing hobby or a travel hobby? It is both.
I didn’t exactly know where today’s track was located. I stopped at the tourist information center in Neuenburg. There we met a friendly young woman who had never ever heard of the Neuenburg autocross race track. I gave her the web link to the track where the information appeared in German. I had asked a couple of other locals in town about the racetrack. They had never heard of it either. This was minorly concerning since Neuenburg was a small town of only 8,000 people. It’s never good to ask local people about their hometown racetrack and hear they have no idea what you’re talking about.
Nuremberg, German borders, the town of Mulhouse, France. We followed the directions of the German tourist information woman, and soon found ourselves in the country of France! I knew this couldn’t be right. Duh.
We pulled over to the side of the road. I instantly went to the Google Maps option on my iPhone. That soon got us in a direction to reenter Germany. We showed up at the track, Sudring, in Neuenburg, Germany, well in advance of the racing.
I might mention that I use the GPS provided on my iPhone for most of these trips. I used to use Waze but lately, I have switched to Google Maps. Sometimes I might supplement Google Maps with the car’s GPS but I would just as soon use a GPS system that I’m familiar with.
In order to have the GPS capability with my iPhone, as well as all of the other things that go with a perfectly functioning phone in a foreign country, I use the AT&T International Day Pass option. This costs $10 a day. With this choice, my phone acts almost the same in a foreign country as it would back in the United States. I can call the United States or anyone in the country where I am located at no charge. Of all of the expenses on a trip like this, I probably consider the $10 I spend each day for this AT&T international service as the best bargain of the trip.
For you racing fans, I’m going to strongly recommend that you look at the photo album and the YouTube videos from the races that we visit. I could sit here and tell you what it was like but I think you’ll get a lot more out of things if you look at the photos and the video.
When we arrived at Sudring, the German autocross track, we immediately took a tour through the paddock area. If you are an American racing fan, you might imagine a paddock area looking one-way when in fact what we were seeing today in Germany was much different than the U.S. Maybe that’s why I like trackchasing internationally. The entry list included a wide selection of VW beetles that would be racing today.
It’s always fun to check out the concessions at these foreign tracks. The choices are almost always different and unusual. Today we started with a homemade waffle. A young girl was managing the waffle business. I guess it was her form of a lemonade stand.
As I wandered around the racetrack grounds, I noticed that I was the only person in the entire crowd wearing shorts. I hate wearing long pants. Unless the temperature is below freezing, you will rarely if ever see me in long pants.
As a matter of fact, Carol has agreed that my burial outfit will be one of my favorite racing t-shirts as well as shorts. I don’t know if you will attend my funeral or not. However, if you do, you have my full permission to peek under the covers to see if I am truly attired in a racing t-shirt and shorts. If I’m not, you might want to mention it to Carol.
The track was also selling beer, sausages, French fries, coffee cake and other scrumptious items. In order to buy anything, you had the first go to a cash desk and exchange €10-20 bills for track currency. They would give you a card that could be presented for food. Tracks do this as a security measure so there are fewer places where employees can steal funds. They say that retailers lose more from their own employees stealing than from their customers!
Uniquely, there was a two euro charge if you ordered a glass bottle of Coca-Cola or a glass of beer. When you brought back the glass container you got your two euros back. When it was time to leave, I debated whether to keep the unique two-euro “chip” or return it for my two euros. I elected to return the chip!
By the way, the official currency in Germany is the euro. Right now, one U.S. dollar will buy you about one euro. This is the strongest the dollar has been at virtually any time in history with its relationship to the euro. In the past, the euro has required as much as $1.60 dollars to buy a single euro.
With the euro down nearly 60% I made a special request to Carol. When we get home, I asked her to exchange $2,000 U.S. for euros. I feel by doing this I’m getting our euros at a very steep discount. You gotta buy things right, right?
The weather was nice although cool as you would expect in the middle of October in Germany. We watched the races from all over the track.
The track surface was a combination of dirt in some places and asphalt in others. In trackchasing vocabulary that’s a “mixed” surface. The Sudring track in Neuenburg, Germany was my fifth-lifetime track in Germany, my 161st lifetime track in Europe, and my 2,840th lifetime track where I’ve seen racing in the world. I guess, for now, that’s good enough.
Tonight, we stayed at a Holiday Inn Express in Gottingen, Germany. I will be the first to admit that I’m not proud to say I stayed at an American-branded hotel while vacationing in Europe. Nevertheless, it was our best choice geographically with a price of less than $100 for a known level of quality. That was hard to pass up.
I had one major point of heartburn with the hotel. The woman bartender was also checking people in at the front desk. That’s a first. It took her a while to get to me between serving drinks.
When I asked her where we would be parking our car, she told me that she no longer had any “free” parking. She wasn’t talking about the price of the parking. She was saying she didn’t have any more “available” parking. This was a fairly large Holiday Inn Express. They only had 23 parking spots on the entire property.
She told me my best bet was to drive to the nearby train station and park there. This didn’t seem like a good choice to me. When someone tells me I should do something that I really don’t want to do, I am trained to resist. The bartender/clerk told me it was only a five-minute walk from the train station back to the hotel. It was 10 o’clock at night. I wasn’t very pleased to get this information and I showed it.
I did my very best to see if we couldn’t come up with a better alternative. I told the woman that I had stayed in more than 5,000 hotels in my life. I had never heard of such a thing with regard to parking. She was a little bit of a smartass. Her response was pretty much “You are not the first person to complain about this nor will you be the last”. I was just about ready to reach across the front desk and either rip her head off or choke her out. However, there would have been a lot of witnesses as the bar was packed. In the end, despite my being a little bit of a jerk about it, I ended up driving down to the train station and walking back to the hotel to close out our night. I wasn’t happy.
Check out our day at the track. The “Sudring” track had some very unusual autocross racers.
Our first day of German trackchasing…autocross racing at Sudring in Neuenburg, Germany
Sunday, October 9, 2022
During our drive all around Germany, we saw a large amount of wind machines. I think what we saw in Belgium last month was a bit more than what Germany had installed but not by much. What Europe is doing with wind power is dramatically more than we see in the United States with the possible exception of Iowa.
Today’s main activity was going to be autocross racing in Oschersleben, Germany. Yes, Saturdays and Sundays are primarily reserved for trackchasing on these trips.
We were fortunate with the weather again today. The temperature was in the low 60s, with a decent breeze and blue skies. In reality, this was perfect fall weather.
The racing would take place at the Motorsport Arena Oschersleben in Oschersleben, Germany. This is a permanent racetrack carved into the rolling hills of a large farm in Oschersleben. Most of the country in these parts is flat. It was very unusual seeing a high-banked racing turn cut into the side of a hill. Essentially the entire area was a pasture or maybe a cornfield.
We spent our time exploring every nook and cranny of the Motorsport Arena. We just beat the crowd for lunch where we dined German sausages and fries. As you might imagine the luncheon selection is the equivalent of America’s hamburger and fries.
Fans can do a lot of walking at tracks like this. We took our time and simply enjoyed ourselves. The track was literally out of the middle of nowhere. Nevertheless, having GPS longitude and latitude coordinates made the place easy to find.
When the races were finished, we hopped in the car for the two-hour drive back to the capital of Germany, Berlin. In all of our travels, we had never been to Berlin. Carol and I were very much looking forward to this part of the trip.
The first weekend of our trackchasing was now finished. The next five days would be devoted to touring and seeing what we could see. We had a couple of things planned but would rely on the touring wind to blow us in a good direction.
There was no doubt about it. Today’s racetrack carved into the rolling hills of a German farm was most unique. Check out this photo album to see both the track and the wide variety of cars that raced at the Motorsports Arena Oschersleben.
We had a fun day of trackchasing at a very unique autocross track in Oschersleben, Germany