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3 Week Tour of Austria, Germany and Switzerland

I'm going to be taking my family of 3 on a tour starting in Vienna and then to Hallstatt, Berchesgaden, Munich and finally to Grindelwald/Lauterbrunnen area. i'm going to drive but I do not know about the ins and outs of driving to these different countries and restrictions i may have. i would like to drop the car off in Zurich for our flight home. Does anyone have preferred car rental place for a trip such as this? I've read something about vignette's (sp) but I'm not sure what they are and if i will need any? help please!

Lee

Posted by
8098 posts

3 weeks is a nice amount of time. Can't help you myself with vignettes as I don't drive in Europe. Have you checked with any rental car providers yet on the additional costs that come with picking a car up in one country and dropping it in another?

Posted by
886 posts

You need the vignette for motorway driving in Switzerland. I don't know how you go about getting one of these for a car rented from/registered in Austria.
All EU countries have ZTLs and may also require stickers showing a vehicle is emission compliant. Aagin, I don't know how you get one for countires other than the one the rental car is registered in.
You'll have to check with the rental compnay and read onlne the information on requirements and rules for Germany and Switzerland as well as Austria.
Everone on here seems to reccommend Auto Europe.
I got one for our own car for |France online.

Posted by
2 posts

Thank you Lin. I had not heard of Auto Europe before but I can see it's similar to Kayak. Sixt is a company i've heard of but never used but I'll keep checking the rates. Sometimes it's you don't know what you don't know so it's good to get the experiences of others who have done similar trips. Thank you!

Posted by
11844 posts

If it were me, I would start with AutoEurope. I've been renting from them in Europe for over 20 years, and I've never had any problems. They act as a consolidator, and so you go to their website, key in your information, dates of departure and arrival, and destinations. Then they will show you a list of car rental companies that have cars for where you want to pick up. They will show you the prices, all of the relevant information, and then you choose which car and which company you want. I like that Auto Europe maintains control over it, so if you ever have any problems, you can contact them. They're always concerned about making sure that you're happy with your car rental company of choice.

You will need to let the car rental company know what country you will be traveling through with the car, as you may need to get stickers for border crossings or permission, or there may be other restrictions involved. Once I rented a car in Germany and drove to to Austria, and the car already had a vignette sticker on it, so we didn't need to do anything. But that might not always be the case.

I'm assuming you know this, but when you drive from city to city, parking is always going to be an issue, and sometimes driving in the cities themselves. Some cities now have congestion fees that they enforce for cars that are driving in the city during certain hours. But again, that's something you can research and find out ahead of time.

If you're interested, AutoEurope has a page that gives you specific driving information for every country in Europe, so you might want to check that out as well. Scroll down until you get to the country listings: https://www.autoeurope.com/driving-information

Edit: Russ is correct that there will almost certainly be a drop-off fee for dropping off the car in a different place, especially a different country. The price can vary depending on the rental car company and the locations.