lannon

My friend and I were planning to fly into Munich in January (found cheap flight), rent a car (found cheap rental) and roadtrip down the autobahn into Austria, cross over into Switzerland to get on the 13 south, stop in Lichtenstein for food/awesome passport stamp, back into Switzerland to continue south into Italy entering around Milan and go south from there to Florence. We'd then base in Florence for at least a week, and hopefully have another week to be somewhere else (thinking maybe Rome or southern France, but would be completely and totally open to new ideas)

So, idea right now is at least five countries and one car:
Germany
Austria
Switzerland
Lichtenstein
Italy

Between the two of us we speak fluent English and Spanish, rudimentary French, limited Italian, and a teeny bit of German. We can also drive stick shift. Mostly, we want to wander, see all the things, eat all the foods and get more passport stamps than a toilet seat gets ass, and see as much as we can in a two or three week period. Have absolutely no idea yet what we might be getting ourselves into in terms of border crossings, visas, odd traffic laws, etc. This trip is still in the very early planning stages and we're just looking for some advice.

Thanks!

logos999

"The border" is maked by a traffic sign on the side of the road. Take a photo. No "Welcome Centers", noone there to stamp your passport. You'll come back without a single stamp . Traffic fines are extremly low in Germany and Austria and extremely high in Switzerland and Italy. Drive on the right, don't drink and drive.

nytraveler

Where are you from? That will determine if you need a visa or not.

And you really can;t get passport stamps - I haven;t seen one for years - and certainly not traveling by road. Typically from one Schenger country to another there is no border stop at all. (If you are from the US it's like going from one state to another - just a sign saying Welcome to X.)

For non-Schengen countries - like Switz there may be a post - but again, we have not been stopped for years - and there is no one to stamp a passport.

As for Lichtenstein don;t bother. We were there, since it was on the entrance road (I beleive) to a tunnel under the mountains from Switz to Austria - and if you blink you will miss it.

Separately, don;t know how old you are - but have you checked age limits/costs for car rentals? Have you checked the drop-off costs of renting in one country and returning in another? Have you cheked costs in Switz - VERY expensive for anything.

logos999

Both Switzerland and Liechtenstein are part of Schengen.

Dukey1

How much of a drop charge are you planning to pay for that rental car?

lannon

We're 25 and 36, so no extra charges on rental car, and we're Americans. We've both traveled to EU countries and UK w/out visas before, and our car rental would be about $270 for two weeks. My credit card offers collison insurance for all international car rentals. We were thinking to fly in and out of Munich, so we would return the rental to the same place we got it. And the car company says we have unlimited mileage to any eu country including lichtenstein, switzerland and for some strange reason, iceland.

Does anyone know if we'll be ok with the languages listed above? Fluent eng/span, conversational french, tiny bit of german and some italian?

bobthenavigator

But, where do you plan to drop it??
If Italy, your surcharge may be 500E.

lannon

We will fly to and from the same city, so we will pick up the rental car in Munich, drive all over the place like crazy tourists and then drive back to Munich and maybe spend a day or two before catching our plane home. No dropping the rental car anywhere weird.

And would we be able to get a cell phone with international text and data that would be good in all of Europe?