At least once in your lifetime you absolutely have to make a pilgrimage to the Nürburgring in Germany to see the 24-Hour race.

Don’t worry about sleep, don’t worry about dehydration, and if you get struck by lightning during one of the many thunderstorms, you will have gone out in the best possible style, your car buddies will say at your funeral. Going to N24 is every car enthusiast’s duty. Or at least it should be.

I went last weekend, and I am still hoarse, dehydrated, and semi-delirious.

Sure, I could have bought a grandstand ticket and sat there under the giant roof and not moved for 24 hours, or I could have sat in the air-conditioned press room and followed everything on the big screen TVs, but where’s the suffering in that?

So, using my 46-word vocabulary, I went out among the Germans, all of them. Not just the handful of corporate-sponsored, numbers-matching guests in the hospitality suites, but the real fans, the ones who lined up at 6 am the Monday before the race—five days before the green flag—to get the best spots at their favorite corners of this crazy and ridiculous track.

“Welcome to the paradise!” said Manfred, an electrical engineer who, with many friends, has been setting up a veritable car racing luxury condominium of hot wheels hospitality made from 2x4s and plywood for 25 years. Manfred was ensconced at a corner known as Brunchen, halfway between Wippermann and Pflanzgarten.

Manfred had set up two diesel generators making 6 kW powering two refrigerators and a pump for the propane-powered hot water shower (“It’s really necessary,” he said of the shower.) There were lights strung back and forth across the maybe 40-foot-long covered balcony hosting a crew of 12 friends.

Manfred at center with friends.

Next to that was Benny and Jan who, when I asked them why their scaffolding high rise looked so structurally sound they replied in unison, “German engineering!” That’s the same German engineering that was roaring by just in front of their Brunchen bivouac. The next word they used was Lebensversicherung, basically translated as “life insurance.”

“You have to secure your load,” they said.

Next to them was a very enthusiastic group seemingly lead by Marc and Michael, from a small town outside Schleider, population 3,000.

If Mad Max set up grandstands...

“We took over this spot from one of our dads,” said Marc. “He had it for 20 years. We call it The Party Haus.”

To assure comfort, the group had brought with them 1,000 liters of beer—Bitburger Pils and Reissdorf Kolsch—held in kegs in a separate trailer.

Next to them was Tom, who has camped in this spot for nine years, and in an adjacent spot for 10 years before that.

“We’ll be here another 10 years,” he is certain.

His setup has two refrigerators, two generators, two bars, and Star Link satellite to feed the race on the big screen TV. Each piece of wood in his magnificent structure has a notation on it saying where it goes in the whole thing, so he can assemble it easier each time.

“All wood is signed, we know where it goes.”

The Nordschleife laser-cut into a burning trash can.

After more wandering around and a short van ride, we found ourselves—our little group of six Americans—wandering through Wehrseifen and Ex-Muhle way over by Adenau.

It was coming up on two in the morning, and it was getting hard to see anything and even harder to walk.

Giant fire barrels led the way and provided heat to warm any body that wanted warming. As in the previous places, everyone was glad to see us.

But it was surreal: on one side high-tech, powerful race cars roared past in the darkness, headlights stabbing the inky gloom, while on the other side four guys sang terrible karaoke on their own built-up platform high above Kallenhard.

Marc, shirt open, screaming, und freunden.

A genuine discotheque made of plywood and tarps featured spinning lights straight from the 1970s and a spray-painted sign on the “door” that read, “Topless Only.” We left our tops on, thank you very much.

Somebody had one of those 20-foot-tall inflatable flopping men, and another guy stood on top of his trailer and waved a “Grello” flag long into the night in honor of the leading Porsche that crossed the finish line first. (The next day, toward the 4:00 pm finish of the race, the same guy waved the same flag in the grandstands across from the pits. Porsche was assessed a penalty, so BMW won the overall race.)

It was 4:30 in the morning before the last of our little group dozed off to the sounds of EDM, fireworks, and roaring engines.

Fans of victorious team BMW.

The point of it all? If you really want to live it up and see some great racing, consider building your own temporary curbside condo during race weekend at the

Nürburgring 24.

Realistically you could rent scaffolding from some German construction company and get to building.

Sure, you’ve got your Bog at Watkins Glen, your Swamp inside Turn 4 at Indy, your Peach Pit at Road Atlanta, but there’s nothing so downright well-screwed-together as a split-level condo construction at the old Nordschleife.

See you next year. For now, auf wiedersehen, baby.