Europe 2019: Hockenheimring

Europe 2019

Hockenheimring

We spent our first night in Germany at the Hotel Motodrom in Hockenheim. When I blog about travel I don't usually talk about hotels, but I probably should. Some people think of hotels as just a place to crash in between adventures. I think of them as part of the adventure so when I can I try to find interesting places to stay. 

Hotel Motordrom is actually part of the track in Hockenheim. We had breakfast (literally the only people in the entire restaurant) watching cars lap the track.

They have a little museum at the track. It's not much and certainly not worth a visit on its own, but it's where you meet for the daily tours of Hockenheimring. They do have a little gift shop, nice bathrooms, and enough interesting stuff to look at to make it a good jump off spot for the tour.

They have a tour most days at 11:00. It's in German, but they will give you audio guides for any language. Samantha found that she really likes audio guides. I can't imagine she was interested in the content, but she listened to every segment at every location.

We run into the "other language tour" thing from time to time on our travels. It doesn't bother me at all. We just kind of hang out at the back and try not to bother the German speakers on the tour. Our guide was great! She went out of her way to try to include us but I told her not to worry about it. I didn't want her to waste everyone else's time repeating everything they had just heard to us. She still talked to us everywhere we went though.

You drive around from location to location in your own car. At the end of the tour you're supposed to do a lap on the track in your own car, but sadly for us there was some film crew using the track day break so we just got to go around the track on the service road. I was very disappointed.

Formula 1 hold the German Grand Prix here. This is the winners podium. When Sam and I went up there I blared the song they play at every F1 podium when the winners are spraying champagne. I don't think anyone got what I was doing. If they did, they certainly didn't find it as amusing as I did.

It was a nice morning. It's not the best track tour we've ever been on. Not getting to lap the track was a major bummer and would have made it 100% better for me, but still, it was a neat experience. 

On a side note - when I got up in the morning and looked out at the hotel parking lot it was just a sea of black and gray (including our rental). I pointed it out to Nel and as we drove around Germany for the rest of the week we noticed that it wasn't just limited to our hotel. Germans just aren't the kind of people to say "You know, I think I'll get a red car this time".