I need advice on renting a car in Germany. We will be arriving at Frankfurt Airport on July 3rd and leaving for Luzern on July 7 and plan on having a car during our stay. We are staying in Gengenbach. Please advise me on the following:
If we wanted to return our car in Freiburg, can we return it at the railway station?
Is it worth paying the extra fee and return the car in Switzerland (Basel) rather than take the train from Fre iburg Is there a rental company return at Basel railway station?
Is the drive from Basel to Luzern difficult? (We have driven from Innsbruck to Lauterbrunnen)
Posted by
Paradise
7072 posts
Hope you don't mind me responding with another question. Why do you want a car for FRA-Gengenbach-Switzerland? After your train ride to Gengenbach, your public transportation to Freiburg and to Basel, and any day trips you might want to make around the Black Forest region from Gengenbach, can be done completely free of charge. Click on the link below for details.
http://www.blackforest-tourism.com/info/KONUS
As for FRA - Gengenbach, this two-hour train trip can be done for as little as €29 on the morning of July 3.
Do you plan to overnight in Freiburg? On July 7, the 8:04 and 9:03 trains from Freiburg to Luzern take 2 hours; tickets are selling for €19.
Check train fares yourself for these journeys at http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en
Posted by
OP
13 posts
Thank you so much for your detailed reply Russ. I really appreciate it. We drove from Munich through Bavaria and Austria last year, and my son wants to fulfill his dream of driving in the Black Forest area. Thank you also for the links.
Posted by
Basel, Switzerland
8889 posts
The drive from Basel to Luzern is easy, Autobahn/motorway all the way. If you have a foreign registered hire car, it probably will not have a Swiss "Vignette" (Autobahn toll sticker) on it. In which case you will have to buy one at the border (CHF 40).
Train from Freiburg im Breisgau to Basel (and Basel to Luzern) is easy. It is the main rail route from Germany to Switzerland.
There are two "main" stations in Basel. IC and ICE trains from Freiburg stop at both, trains to Luzern leave from Basel SBB, the 2nd stop.
Locations to return the car depend on your rental company, I would check their website.
By "extra fee" I assume you mean the surcharge for dropping the car off in another country. One way to avoid this is if your car hire company has an office in either Lörrach or Weil-am-Rhein. Both are suburbs of Basel, with local train/tram connections into the city centre, but they are in Germany, so no international drop-off charges.
Posted by
OP
13 posts
Thank you so much for the helpful advice Chris. It's probably best to return the car in Freiburg and take the train to Basel and on to Lucerne.