Motorway Vignettes
 

I have read that to drive on Austrian and Swiss motorways you need to pre-purchase a vignette (minimum 10 days) and have it already affixed to your windscreen when crossing into these countries. Presumably if we're visiting both Austria and Switzerland, we'd need two 10-day vignettes, one for each country.

Would I be right in thinking that if we enter these countries by ordinary (non-motorway) roads, and keep to lesser roads throughout our time there, we will not need vignettes?

It's not that the vignettes are particularly expensive. It's more that we'll only be dipping briefly into each of these countries (3 days in Austria, 1 day in Switzerland) in a driving tour centred mainly on Germany and the Czech Republic. Two 10-day vignettes for only four days of travel seems a waste.

If the "lesser roads" idea is a way of avoiding vignettes, people might like to comment on how easy it will be for us to do that in the following itineraries. Austria - we'll be driving to Krems from Cesky Krumlov, using Krems as a base to take the train into Vienna, then driving out via Linz to Munich. Switzerland - we'll be driving to Schaffhausen Rheinfalls from Meersburg, and driving back out either to Basel or Freiburg.

Thanks for any suggestions.

You need a Vignette for the Czech Republic too if you are using the motorways http://www.motorway.cz/stickers

If you aren't using any motorways you don't need the stickers but if there is the slightest chance of you using one you need them. Fines are high, and ten day stickers are not expensive.

Switzerland does not have 10 days vignettes. They have only yearly vignettes, they cost 40 SFR, and they are good from December of the previous year till January of the following year. If you try to enter Switzerland on a motorway without a vignette, you will be diverted to a lane where vignettes are sold. If you enter from a passage on ordinary roads you may be asked if you need one, but as long as you care not to enter motorways you do not need to have it.

Austria has inexpensive 10 days vignettes; you must buy them at border crossing, or even at petrol stations before the border. Again, you do not need them if you do not travel on motorways.

If you are on a motorway and you do not have a vignette fines will be stinging. Austrians do not check vignettes at the border, but often check a few kms. past the border. If you do not pay on the spot, they can even impound some of your possessions.

It's really quite difficult - in my experience - to drive through or round the Basle conurbation without stumbling onto a road that requires a vignette.

For any kind of inter-city drive, the default signage really forces you onto motorways. It may be possible to programme a satnav to avoid toll roads - but faced with a silly voice telling you to turn off into the left hand lane, when there's a whopping great sign telling you to go straight for Freiburg, and half a dozen German TIRs on your bum clearly intent on bulldozing you if you go left, most of us would stay straight.

To save CHF 30 or whatever, I just wouldn't bother. Buy the vignette.

BTW, I would gladly pay an Austrian vignette and spare me the pain of driving Krems to Salzburg on ordinary roads. It longer than you think on motorway and it would never end on country roads.
You would even have to drive through the centre of Salzburg to skip the motorway belt.

Two Vignettes for only 4 days of travel is not a waste. What would be a waste is getting a 100 to 200 € fine for not having one. The Austrian Vignette costs under €9 for 10 days. Buy it at gas stations before entering Austria.

OK, the first thing that leaps out at me from these replies is that I'm no longer talking about only 2 vignettes - I may need one for the Czech Republic as well. And while the Czech and Austrian vignettes are cheap, the Swiss ones are not. And our time in Switzerland is only half a day!

Point taken about the Basel conurbation. Our destination that day is Colmar, so perhaps we'll head straight up via Freiburg from Schaffhausen.

We're coming from Gorlitz to Prague, then to Cesky Krumlov, then on to Krems. Looks like it'll be hard to avoid motorways on the first part of the Prague - Cesky Krumlov route. We'll buy a Czech vignette just to be safe!

Our Austrian section seems motorway free, but as the vignettes are cheap we'll buy one there too.

An interesting aside: these researches revealed that Slovenia also has the vignette system. We were there only a few months ago and knew nothing about it! Drove from Zagreb to Lake Bled, then Bled to Ljubljana, then Ljubljana to Gorizia. No vignette, and no trouble! Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Hopefully not, but the tickets may still be coming for Slovenia.

To drive on many highways here in the U.S., we pay tolls. I have no problem buying a Vignette for other countries.

It would be incredibly ridiculous to buy a vignette in order to use the 6 kms of motorway between the German border and Schaffhausen Sud. Just leave the GErman motorway at Gottmadingen, cross the border, enter the village of Thayngen and continue along the excellent local road.
Drive from the Rhine Falls to Neunkirch - Trasadingen and on the German Bundesstrasse 34 to Bad Saeckingen - Badisch Rheinfelden. From there you can either
continue on the German motorway A98 to Weil am Rhein - A5 - Neuenburg - A36 - Ile Napoleon - A35 - Colmar or
remain on the Bundesstrasse 34 and enter the city of Basel (in the case you plan to visit it).

Thanks everyone. It's all been helpful and enlightening. Yes, neckervd, I've plotted a route on Viamichelin that will get me through the Schaffhausen visit that looks very much like the route you've suggested. Coffeequeen, I hope I'm safe re Slovenia. It was back in September. Interestingly there were toll booths along the motorway from Ljubljana to Postojna, but only trucks had to go stop at them. We were given a clear run through.