Sabine versus the Nurburgring
Local businesses still not happy with latest regime at the 'ring
"It's not my dream, but we can't change anything," she told us. As many 'ring regulars will know, Schmitz grew up in Nurburg and still helps run the family's Hotel am Tiergarten, on top of a motorsport business she runs with her boyfriend.
Her continued beef with the owners is that they channel business to the Lindner hotels in the area, an accusation levelled from the very start of the massive redevelopment that opened in 2011. "If you rent the track you have to rent their hotels too, and that was a big disaster for the families who lived there since 80, 90 years, everybody was very upset about it," she says.
The Nurburgring has been a key German tourist destination since it was opened in 1927, but in recent years it has lurched from one financial disaster to another, despite the input of millions of euros of state aid. "They made some big mistakes, like cancelling Rock am Ring, the big rock concert. It meant missing out on a lot of money during the summer," Schmitz says.
In Capricorn's defence it does seem to be making a go of things outside of the track. The StrongmanRun last weekend attracted 10,528 participants the company said, and it has added a professional element to the Rad am Ring cycling event on the last weekend in July. It's cashing in on the track by adding advertising hoarding round the track, and has signed a new partner for the Ring Taxi that helped propel Schmitz into the limelight.
[Sources: Autocar]
Whenever I have been to Sabine's hotel it is hard to get a table to eat and it's a decent size so they are doing better than most.
I'd imagine most of the tourists themselves stay in Nurburg and Adenau as they are nicer places, cheaper and have more to do at night, especially Adenau.
To be honest this is a bit of a non article. I love how they describe her opposition as 'vociferous' then two sentences later "It's not my dream but we can't change anything" god help us all if thats what vociferous opposition now sounds like.
Only worry would be if they start to ratchet up prices during busy weekends like the VLN.
Then, amid huge local opposition, the decision was taken to lump in the profit-making Nordschleife with the sale of the loss making 'Nurodisney' project that nobody wanted to otherwise touch. The only concession in the tender process was that it would be sold only to somebody who had local credentials and local perspective on how to wrestle the mess back from acquisitive and ill thought out mismanagement/fraud. They chose Capricorn. What wasn't clear for some unknown reason was that Capricorn didn't have the money, were then bailed out by a f***ing Russian oligarch, and now it's basically owned by him. Except, it turns out he's not even a real oligarch, and is backed by somebody else, and someone really seedy behind the tin curtain is suspected.
This was never about just the short term local interests of whether the Schmitz family's restaurant is busy or not. It's about the fact that if somebody who is responsible and doesn't screw it into the ground for short term gain doesn't fix this, the ring and that crazy but amazing idea of 26 euros a lap could end.
Rant over. Appreciate people saying business is business, but the whole history has been made more complicated than that by criminals and douchebags.
Oh wait no, because she is a woman who has "aged a fair bit" i.e. old men fancy her less, this makes her less suitable in the eyes of some PHers.
It's always threads about women on PH that I remember quite how outrageous and outdated some of the views towards women which exist out there.
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