Transportation help Germany/France
 

We are going to Germany/France in September. I am having a hard time deciding on transportation. I am planning on renting a car in Germany only and using the trains in France. Here are my dilemmas:

1) Arrive on Sept 2 in Frankfurt, do we get the rental at the airport and pay more for this convenience or do we go into town and pick it up there. Originally I wanted to save the $$ and get it in town but after reading some posts here, the little extra that they charge for the convenience may be worth it.


We will be in Germany until the morning of the 7th, so we will keep the car until the 6th as we will be in Trier this last day and we would not need a car for this.

2) When we leave on the 7th we will head for Paris for our last 5 days, on the way
there we planned on using the train, Trier to Paris = 5hrs. We wanted to see Verdun on the way but I am having a hard time finding the train from Trier to Verdun to Paris without going strait to Paris and heading back. This would definitely not work and if it is too much to get to Verdun we would unfortunately have to skip it.

3) So last dilemma, if we kept the car and returned it possibly outside of Paris somewhere (would not want to drive IN the city!!) we could easily drive to where we want to go, right??. Cost would be 2 more car days, 7th and 8th (approx $140 more for transportation budget, plus gas). Can we take the car over the boarder of Germany? How long would the drive itself take and what would your opinion be in this choice???

Thanks for all the suggestions! If I have left something out in order for you to reply please let me know, this trip planning is making me bonkers right now!! : )

Here are my ideas...

Pick up the car at the airport desk - it's worth the extra cost in terms of time and effort. Drive the car until you arrive at CDG and then use public transportation into Paris. Use the viaMichelin website for travel times and distances. Try to coordinate the timing so that it's exactly one week - the rate is better this way. Contact Andy Bestor who will give you advice and the best price, booking through AutoEurope...

Andrew Bestor
Gemut.com Travel Services
Tel. 800-521-6722, 541-488-8462, Fax 541-488-8468
Web: http://www.gemut.com; Email: [email protected]

Car rental companies are very clever to create different extra fee's to improve their income. Some of this fee's are:

- German airport fee (+10% per day)
- one way rental charge (depending on
the distance)

I assume, that you will have problems to find a car rental company, which allows car rentals between Germany and France. Be aware: They will charge you with a high fee, as they will have to bring the empty car back to the pick-up location.

I recommend for your budget to pick and drop the car in Frankfurt. Then go by train towards Trier. If you have a need for a car in Trier, rent a new car in Trier (and return the car again in Trier).

Any rental company will let you pick up a car in Frankfurt and drop it in Paris. the question is - how much will the drop off charge be - or will they change the daily rate.

But - if you really want to see Verdun (and it is possible you do need to go into Paris and then change trains to do so - in europe the train system is often spoke and wheel - like the plane system here) - then go for it.

Also - have you looked at alternate trains for Verdun (ie - not via Paris - but through Luxembourg or something instead?)

I recently read an article on how to save money on car rentals in Europe. They said to save money you should avoid the Airport/Train station surcharge in German, Avoid the charge of dropping the car in another country, get a diesel if you can, don't rent a full size car, only have one driver listed for the rental, Use your credit card to get CDW insurance covered, use a big rental lot where you have a selection of cars (perhaps you will find one with French tags that you can take home for them).

The freeway (French version of the Autobahn) from the French border to Paris is a toll road and you will stop every few miles to pay another toll. Seems like it was 25-30 euros for the trip.

You don't say what your overall touring profile involves, so what I can offer may or may not apply to your situation.

Do you really need a car in Frankfurt? What do you plan to do with it? If you're going to drive far and wide, you might want to consider taking the train and renting cars locally by the day. Some days you won't even need one, because you'll be in a city where getting around by public transport is easier the messing with the logistics of a car.

Since you mention saving money by picking up the car in Frankfurt instead of at the airport, I assume you have some sensitivity to the cost of things. In this case, you should compare the cost of rental plus mileage plus fuel to get from A to B vs. a train ticket. If you're moving around a lot, a train pass might make sense.

Visiting Verdun would be simplified by taking the train to Verdun (or Metz or Chalons) and renting a car there. After your tour, finish the trip to Paris by train as you originally suggested.

I forgot to mention: there is train service from Trier to Verdun via Saarbruecken or Luxembourg without going into Paris. See:

<b>http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en
</b>

Wow! Your advise is great as usual, thanks for the insight.

TuckH – Thanks for such great detail on the car rental. I tend to agree with paying the little bit of extra $ to save the hustle of picking the car up somewhere other than the airport. Thanks again! I will definitely call Mr. Bestor.

nytraveler – Yes, I looked for trains from Luxembourg I thought this would be a convenient as well as we were going to try and make this a stop on our way out, but we will most likely see this while we have the car. For some reason this stop adds to the length of time (???) Don’t really understand why???


AisleSeat – Thanks for the info on the tolls, I did not realize that it was that the tolls were that expensive. And I complain about driving to Orlando!! : )


Robespierre – Sorry, I guess I should have included the reason for the car. We are arriving at the airport in Frankurt and heading straight to Beilstein. While we are in the Mosel area we planned to stay in Beilstein for 3 nights then 2 nights in Trier (?? – or where ever may strike us). We were going to use the car to see Koblenz to Trier, if possible, during this time. We thought that having a car would give us the most flexibility. We don’t know what cities we will be seeing on which days as we are going to just check out what is appealing at the moment. I am still planning the transportation portion of the trip (as you can tell..: ) ) but I will definitely weigh my options. I did check out the website you posted and it was very helpful…thanks!!!

We just returned from Germany last week. There's no need to go all the way into Frankfurt to avoid the airport tax. We picked up our car in KELSTERBACH which is only a few kilometers from the Frankfurt Airport.

It cost us less than 20 Euro for the taxi ride including tip and took only about 10 minutes or so to get there. We were still able to return the car at the Airport at the end of our vacation.

Our rental was thru AutoEurope but you should be able to do the same thru gemut.com. While there may be others in Kelsterbach, our rental car company was Avis.

tom22-it's my experience in Europe that the extra airport cost is not a rental company fee, but a government tax. I guess it might not be so in some places, but it is in the places I rented cars.

Also, the drop off fee hasn't been based on distance at all, but when you drop off in another country.