My husband and I are planning to take a train from Munich to Frankfurt and picking up a rental car for driving in the Mosel/Rhine area for 3-4 days and returning the car to Freiburg and continue by train into Switzerland. Any suggestions for best place to pick up car in Frankfurt having arrived there by train. We would like to avoid surcharges for picking up at train or airport location but also want to consider the ease of driving out of Frankfurt. Also any comments on returning the car in Freiburg.
Thanks for your help as usual.

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I'm not sure about the "best" place in Frankfurt but keep in mind they put a 19% surtax on cars that are rented in Germany at Airports or Train Stations. If you can get a place away from the train station you will save that charge.

I normally book my cars in Germany through Bob Bestor at Gemutlichkeit Travel Gemut.com I feel like I get the best deal with them and they can answer questions like the one you are asking. When you go to their website you do not have to pay to sign up for the newsletter to use them to book cars.

Would it be more trouble to take the train to Freiburg and pick up the rental there? You would certainly avoid any one way charges.

There usually aren't any one-way charges if you are picking up and dropping off the car within Germany.

We have rented our cars the last couple of years thru gemut.com with pickup in Kelsterbach which is just a short taxi ride from the Frankfurt Airport (cost around 15 Euro with tip).

To get an idea of the difference in rates, go to the autoeurope.com website and use Frankfurt Airport as your pickup point and then try Kelsterbach. You can see how much impact the taxes will have on your charges. For a 2-week trip, it can be considerable but might not be much for a few days.

If you do pick up the car in Kelsterbach, you can still return in to the Frankfurt Airport with no extra charge.

Any recommendations for a place close to the Munich airport where we can pick up/drop off a car and avoid the 19% surtax?

Not to interrupt this thread but we have similar questions. We will fly into Frankfurt and drive to some Rhine towns, Romantic Road, Bavaria, Salzburg, and train into Vienna. If we drop the car in Salzburg or near there will we incur the drop fee for returning in Austria? That is a very good tip on not renting the car at the airport in Frankfurt.

Nini, Salzburg is not in Germany, so yes there probably will be a drop charge. You would need to find someplace in Germany that is close to Salzburg to return the car and then perhaps just train from there to Salzburg.

Explorefamily, AisleSeat had a good suggestion about contacting Bob Bestor at Gemut.com. I bet they can tell you where the best place would be near Munich to pick up your rental car.

As bettyk mentioned Kelsterbach is not far from Frankfurt. Avis and Europcar have stations there and both also in Freiburg. You can use S-Bahn (local train) going to Kelsterbach.Bettyk forgot that you are not arriving at Frankfurt-Airport, but at Frankfurt-Hauptbahnhof(central station). A taxi from there would be more or less 30-40 Euro not 15. Avis and Europcar both have stations on Hanauer Landstrasse in Frankfurt, approx. 3 miles from Hauptbahnhof. For this distance a taxi ride comes up to less than 10 Euro.
One-way rentals in Germany normally are not charged extra.
I always did my rentals for Avis or the other agencies directly.

explorefamily
Avis and Europcar are having stations in Erding. Thats the town closest to Munich-Airport.

nini
the town next to Salzburg in Germany is Freilassing. Almost all big car rental companies, i.e. Avis
, Hertz, Europcar, Sixt have stations there.

wolfmisc, I didn't actually forget that they were arriving at the train station in Frankfurt. I just assumed that they could continue on to the airport and take a taxi from there. Maybe I'm wrong about that though...