Bestor's Blog
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- Category: Rail Travel Europe
"Can you recommend the best rail daytrips from Garmisch-Partenkirchen?"...or cities such as Vienna, Salzburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Berlin, Zürich, Interlaken, etc. It's a good question that pops up frequently in my email inbox. I'd love to have enough time to research and answer each one but like the old saw about "give a man a fish and he can eat for a day, but teach a man to fish and..." Well, you get the idea. So here's how to identify great rail daytrip destinations from European cities.
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- Category: Car Rental in Europe
Present your auto rental voucher. Multiple bookings with the same supplier (perhaps you made a reservation online which was never cancelled) are confusing to rental car suppliers. If a written booking confirmation is not presented, the rental agent may locate the wrong reservation and a different — higher — rate could be charged.
Call the toll-free-from-Europe help line. Provided you book with Gemut.com, most issues that arise at the rental counter can be solved in minutes via a toll-free-from-Europe, customer service help line (the number is under Terms & Conditions in your voucher). Let's say you booked an automatic transmission car but one is not available when you arrive. Call the number. Promised an upgrade, but the rental agent offers a Lupo? Call the number. It's your safety net.
Decline insurance. Most credit cards issued by North American banks offer CDW/Theft protection for auto rental in most of Europe. There are exceptions like Italy and Ireland, where the customer must purchase full-coverage. In all other countries, I recommend clients decline CDW/Theft in favor of the coverage offered by the credit card. Call your credit card issuer for details. Be sure the contract you ultimately sign does not include this optional insurance. If the counter agent says you have to purchase insurance, call the toll-free number mentioned above.
Decline pre-paid fuel. This is a bad deal. The offer works this way: you pay for the first tank and return the car empty. Not as easy as it sounds and who wants to be driving around on fumes, especially when headed for a European airport to catch a flight home. Any fuel left in the tank at the end of the rental is yours, but you won't get a refund.
Ask for instruction on vehicle operation. It once took me a full five minutes just to figure out how the windshield wipers on a BMW. Radios, too, are often not user-friendly and may have unfamiliar features. If you get a car with a GPS be sure it's set on English language mode. Finally, be sure you know whether you have a gas or diesel engine. Figure on a charge of about $400—and major inconvenience— if you fill the tank with the wrong fuel.
Inspect the car. If the car is dirty inside or out, refuse it. Check for obvious and not-so-obvious damage (even small scratches). Make sure any damage is noted in writing. If you have a digital camera, it's a good idea to take pictures of the car from all sides and again when you return the car. Visually inspect tires for wear and inflation level. When in doubt, call the toll-free help line.
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- Category: Europe Travel General
Until you've done it a few times, legally driving as fast as you want on Germany's Autobahn is an exciting prospect. Many years ago, on a quiet Sunday morning on an almost deserted stretch of newly-paved Autobahn near Saarbrucken, I briefly hit 210kmh (131mph) in a 5-series BMW. But the road wasn't entirely deserted and in doing so I overtook a couple of much slower vehicles. As I did, I realized that at a certain point in the passing process there was a moment when my safety was totally dependent on the car being passed. Had the other driver(s) decided to change lanes at the wrong time, drastic evasive action would have been required to avoid a collision—and quite frankly I wasn't at all sure I could have maintained control while braking and/or swerving at that speed. There is always danger, of course, in passing at such high speed, but the greater danger is the difference in speed between the two vehicles. If, at 70mph, you are two car lengths to the rear of a car going 55mph, and that car suddenly changes to your lane, you can avoid a collision by simply backing off the gas, or by braking. Even if the slower car is only a few feet ahead and decides abruptly to change lanes, at a last resort the faster car can move onto the left shoulder. But at 115 to 130mph, there is no time for braking and only the most skillful driver would be able to move onto the left shoulder without going into a skid that could end in disaster.
These days, when conditions are right, I'm comfortable cooking along at 150 to 160 kmh (94-100 mph). That speed requires a lot of lane changing, because the faster Audis, Beamers, and MBZs rocket past me in the left lane, while trucks and slower passenger cars dawdle along in right lane.
For years there have been predictions of Autobahn speed limits. To a large extent, that has already taken place. As traffic increases, new signs limiting speeds to 80 kmh to 130 kmh seem to pop up every day. The Munich-Salzburg section of Autobahn was once a veritable race track for almost its entire 140 km (88 miles) length. Now there are only a few brief 'any speed goes' stretches. It is said that half of Germany's 12,000 km of Autobahn has no speed limit, but that undoubtedly includes many kilometers of highway where the speed can temporarily be reduced by electronic signage when traffic and weather conditions warrant.
Applying more brakes to fast motoring in Germany is the city-state of Bremen which has imposed a speed limit of 120 kmh (75 mph) on its 60 km of Autobahn. It thus became the first German state to introduce a general Autobahn speed limit. It did so for both safety and environmental reasons, and hopes other states will follow suit.
So if you need to get some really fast driving out of your system in Germany, you'd better do it soon because those little circular 120 kmh and 130 kmh signs are going up all over the country. (Recommended reading: Driving the Autobahn)
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- Category: Car Rental in Europe
Hear this: you want a rental car contract that does not include collision damage waiver (CDW)–LDW (loss damage waiver) in Europe—or theft insurance. Naturally you want the coverage, you just don't want it from your rental company. Why? Because, as the UK magazine Which? Holiday says:
Most car-hire fees automatically include some kind of car insurance, however, in most cases, these policies protect the company and not the consumer. Customers with damaged cars often have to pay out large excess fees. The article goes on to declare, The excess (deductible) fee that the consumer would have to pay in the event of an accident if they had rented a car from any one of the five most popular car-hire firms in the UK and collected their car from an airport in Ireland, ranged between €779 ($1207) to €1,947 ($3,018).
We've been saying this for years, but it's nice to hear it from another source. When renting a car through a Europe-based company, such as Argus or Nova, or directly from a supplier such as Europcar, the insurance is almost always included, but with a high deductible (excess). In addition, this included insurance, which "protects" the renter from damage and theft, often excludes damage to many parts of the car including the windshield, wheels, roof, undercarriage, tires and interior. When you make a booking online from all the Europe-based companies I've seen, this information is unearthed only after a diligent search and the clicking of several links. And, just as soon as you sign a rental car contract including theft and CDW, it is extremely likely that your credit card insurance will be invalidated, because, except in rare cases, in order for your free, zero-deductible credit card insurance to be in effect, you can't have any other coverage...regardless of the amount of that coverage's deductible.
Most gold, platinum, Amex, and Diners' Club credit cards offer free CDW/theft. Visa's Website contains a fairly clear and straightforward description of what its insurance does and does not cover. Most ordinary passenger vehicles are covered but travelers who plan to drive a nine-passenger van, a Porsche sports car, or a Mercedes-Benz, BMW, or Audi, with a sticker price over about $45,000, should check with their credit card company.
