Nurburgring, home to the European Grand Prix, and what a race it was!! It had everything, and finished with Aussie Mark Webber on the podium for only the second time in his career.

The day began for us with a champagne buffet breakfast at our hotel in Bonn, where we had met up with Ben and Ann from Hobart, and Ann's sister Di who lives in London. Ben and I had been to Qualifying on Saturday, and seen Webber put in a strong perfomance to qualify 6th. Probably the best we could've hoped for. While we were there, the girls had gone to Cologne for shopping and sightseeing. The cathedral there is amazing apparently. Bonn hasn't a lot of sights to offer except for Beethoven's house, but we think it deserves a better rap than the lonely planet gave it.

We arrived at the track on Sunday in good time, and walked around the outside of the track to our hill. Unlike the Melbourne GP, a general admission ticket applies to only one area so we couldn't check out any other parts of the track. Our hill was just before the fastest spot of the circuit, on the back straight before the chicane. We had a pretty good view and could see the cars for long enough. We also had a big screen opposite so we could follow the action around the track. There was also the radio broadcast, almost entirely in German, but with an English bloke to help out during the F1 providing the vital information. The German commentry was highly entertaining in itself, as there was random english words mixed in. A great example was: "blah blah blah (German words) blah blah lollipop man blah blah blah".

So we got a good spot on our hill, had our Aussie flags flying from big sticks that Ben salvaged from the woods, green and gold zinc cream, and a giant Aussie finger. We were ready for Mark Webber day.

After the drivers parade, we had a bratwurst to keep our energy up for the race to come, and were told about 5 minutes before the race that rain was expected in 7 minutes! Now the day was really clear when we got up, so I had donned the shorts. The race started and about halfway through the first lap we copped a massive downpour that flooded the track, and drenched us. The race was red-flagged after 6 cars slipped off at turn one, leaving German Markus Winkelhoff in the Spyker (slowest car in the field) in the lead of the race on debut! He'd pitted before the start for wet weather tyres, and inherited the lead when all the others pitted. When the race was stopped he was over 30 seconds in front!

The downpour stopped leaving us wet and cold, but happy that Webber had survived the carnage and was sitting in fourth place. At the restart the Spyker was quickly passed, and Webber was up to third behind Massa and Alonso.

The rest of the race was pretty normal, the track dried and dry tyres were whacked on, everyone had their scheduled fuel stops, and Raikonnen's retirement meant that Webber was solidly in third. All looking good until another dump of rain with about 10 laps to go. Another change to wet tyres for all, and Webber was still third but a bit slower than Wurtz in fourth. On the last lap we almost had a heart attack as Webber was really slow through the chicane, and Wurtz was right behind. Webber managed to fend him off and took third place, and equalling his best ever finish. The crowd went wild (well the five of us anyway). We had the obligitory celebratory beer before joining the masses leaving the hill. Unfortunately the razor wire between us and the track prevented us jumping the fence and running around to the podium celebration so we had to just leave.

None of the others had been to an F1 race before, and none of the girls were F1 fans. Even though it bucketed with rain and we had no cover everyone had a great day. A sign of how awesome Formula One is!

Besides the Formula One, Germany has been great so far. We flew into Dusseldorf on Thursday, then on to Bonn on Friday. We found a great local pub in Bonn serving traditional German food (Meat & Potatoes basically) and ate there twice. There was a market set up in one of the town's squares, where we found bratwurst, and discovered the beauty of a German currywurst. I'd expected a currywurst to be a curry flavoured sausage. Turns out it's a bratwurst sausage, put through a slicing machine, served on a plate with ketchup (the best ketchup I ever had) then topped with a sprinkle of curry powder. It was so tasty.

We're off to Munich next, heart of Bavaria and it's many breweries.

Paul.