However, when he contacted Rent-RaceCar, a local company that rents race and safety prepped cars specifically for the Nordschleife, they were all booked for that day. So he scheduled to do it at the end of the day on the 8th. We rented a street car to make the journey from Koblenz to the Nurburgring easier and faster, we checked into our hotel and immediately set off for Rent-RaceCar's operation nearby.
He orginally picked a small BMW to drive from the online car selection, but it turned out they had added some Suzuki Swifts that weren't on the website yet. Renting one of them would be just as much fun and cheaper, so that's what he chose.
The company contracts for packages that include the car and the number of laps. Trout wasn't sure he could do 8 laps of the 21 KM circuit in the time allowed, so he contracted for 4. Heidi Kleen, co-owner, said he could always add more if he had the time and the stamina. They'd just keep track of the laps and he could pay at the end of the day.
We returned to our room and rested for awhile. Then we went back to Rent-RaceCar for him to get his car. There were 5 guys driving from this operation that afternoon that had not driven the track before.
The other owner of the business, Theo Kleen, has driven the track more than 6000 times. He takes the newbies around it at speed in his VW GTI so they can get some idea of what it's like. But first, he shows them the entrance to and exit from the track.
Trout was among the 1st 3 to see the track. He sat in the passenger seat up front.
This is a public one way road (Einbahnstrasse). Anyone can drive on it in any powered vehicle so long as they pay the fee. The variety of vehicles is pretty amazing.
Trout wanted me to ride with him, but I begged off. Theo took the other 2 drivers and one of their girlfriends around for a lap. I was the last one left, so I got to go around by myself with him. I sat in the front passenger seat like Trout did. It was great! I don't think he slowed down much for me. That allowed Trout to go ahead and get on the track without having to worry about me. Here he is heading from the parking area.
Now he's getting into the group to go on track.
After each lap the drivers have to go through this entrance.
The guy on the left works for Rent-RaceCar. He kept track of the number of laps for each driver. But I took this picture mostly to show the car that's in the gate behind him.
Remember what I said about any kind of vehicle? These are some vans with firefighters in them. 
This is Trout finally coming off the track. He ended up doing 8 laps and coming in for a break only once. Heidi was very surprised because he did so many and so fast -- more than anyone else that afternoon.
So we all met back at the offices and the drivers did a bit of bench racing.
And we had to get a picture of Trout with Theo.
The next day, Trout took some pictures of cars on the track on the back side.
The cars on the track weren't his only interest. He needed pictures of other cars we saw there, both personal and in showrooms. In fact, that became a fascination for the whole trip. There is much more variety in the cars on the street in Europe than we see in the States -- in all sizes and price ranges.These were parked outside our hotel.
These were in a display hall next door.
This was in an area with experimental cars nearby.
This is the exterior of the display hall. As you can see, things are still under construction.
Of course, Trout had to eat ice cream while we were there.
The hotel was very modern and had these fun light fixtures -- pictures of chandeliers backlit with fluorescents. The EU is going to mandatory fluorescent lighting very soon and most places we were already had it in place.
This was the exterior of our hotel. We were actually supposed to stay in the funkier German Alpine one with the cheaper price I thought, but we ended up in the very expensive one at the same price.
This was our room. I think it was the nicest one we had on the whole trip. It was also the cheapest we had that included breakfast and the hotel had the best breakfast buffet.
This was the view from the room. You can see some of the construction.
You may have noticed that Trout had a great afternoon to drive, and the next day would've been good, too. We felt sorry for the folks on the morning we left because this is what we woke up to out that same window. We could still hear cars on the track, though.
In spite of some gut issues for me (something I ate the day before) and the fog, we managed to get the rental turned in on time. This was the only other car we rented, and of course it was also an Opel. 
After driving in Iceland and Germany, at the end of our trip Trout said he was ready to come back, rent a car and explore the Alps in Germany, Italy, Switzerland and France. We met a couple from Seattle in Paris. They flew to Paris, rented a car, drove all around France, turned in the car back at the airport and took public transportation to explore Paris. Doing something similar sounds like a great idea for the next trip.
