General Info

[QUOTE=Zont26]Hello Gents,

When I learned the German I still remember from long ago in a land far away, I recall that we were discouraged from "duzen".

The theory was this. German is hard enough to learn anyway. If we got ourselves into any "duzen" situations, chances are we would also be immersed and the rest of it would flow naturally.

Consequently, everything was "Sie". We were taught to be polite and a little more formal and standoffish.

It appears that the FKK's are "duzen city". I guess it you get that close to the girls (or plan to), it is expected that a gent will use the more informal and intimate "du" when conversing with the ladies.

In my few visits a few years ago, I stuck with Sie because that it what I know (and I use "know" loosely).

Is sticking with the Sie form of address reasonable in a FKK? Do they even care?

Shoot. Some of the time I was better off muddling through in English because the lady's German was almost as bad as mine, and she had enough education in English that it worked better anyway. I started to think that addressing a lady in English might be an easier way to smoke out a lady that was relatively new, might not have loaded up on German regulars, or might not be a native German (a type that some of you gents recommend avoiding).[/QUOTE]You're thinking too much. :-) If you are not confident with your German, it's probably best to start off in English. If the provider has no English, do your best with whatever German you can come up with.

With the providers it is "Du" in German. But they do not care. Most make mistakes themselves if they are not German. Fact is, your money speaks more loudly. Just go and enjoy yourself. Hundreds of others do every day with zero German.

[QUOTE=Toscana]You're thinking too much. :-) If you are not confident with your German, it's probably best to start off in English.[?QUOTE]When I am around beautiful young women in a sexually charged atmosphere, my English is not especially good either!

Gents,

Are any of you aware of any car hire deals out of Dusseldorf airport ? I've looked around at some of the major sites, and the minimum rate I've been able to find is about 100 Euros a day !! I don't know if it's because I'm a foreigner or what, but that does seem quite high.

Looking for something for my 3 day trip to Hessen next month. Let me know if you're aware of anything.

Thanks!

[QUOTE=N O R E]Gents,

Are any of you aware of any car hire deals out of Dusseldorf airport ? I've looked around at some of the major sites, and the minimum rate I've been able to find is about 100 Euros a day !! I don't know if it's because I'm a foreigner or what, but that does seem quite high.

Looking for something for my 3 day trip to Hessen next month. Let me know if you're aware of anything.

Thanks![/QUOTE]
There are plenty of reports about cheap car hire, use the search feature. Here are couple of hints:

a) go to hertz.de (NOT hertz.com). You can have the site in english if you can't read German. Find the offers link on the left side and you should be able to take it from there

b) go to Avis.de, select "top angebote" and then use the link "Avis Basic"

and finally, yes, it is because you are foreigner, or more correctly, you are probably using the .com websites of brand name rental companies which does not assume you are renting as local. Totally different price strategy. Want to know why? Google it.

You can also use couple of decent agents that might have better prices such as:

[url]www.economycarrentals.com[/url] or [url]www.autoeurope.ie[/url]

I've used autoeurope.com about five different times in the last few years, and it's worked well. You don't know which company you'll be renting from until you make the final purchase. The Ireland resident version of the site has a much better price, and includes the CDW. I don't know why the price is so different, but I think it should be able to be given to a U.S. citizen based upon the price I looked at on the economycarrentals.com.

The economycarrentals.com has the approximate prices of the Ireland price for a U.S. citizen, and it appears to have full insurance coverage. I'll have to read the fine print more, but it seems like economycarrentals may be the way to go.

Has anybody used economycarrentals before? What has been your experience with them?

I found a pretty decent deal on the hertz.de website, but apparently its only for residents of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (according to the Terms and Conditions). Wonder how/if I can get around that without too much trouble.

[QUOTE=Jak]I've used autoeurope.com about five different times in the last few years, and it's worked well. You don't know which company you'll be renting from until you make the final purchase. The Ireland resident version of the site has a much better price, and includes the CDW. I don't know why the price is so different, but I think it should be able to be given to a U.S. citizen based upon the price I looked at on the economycarrentals.com.

The economycarrentals.com has the approximate prices of the Ireland price for a U.S. citizen, and it appears to have full insurance coverage. I'll have to read the fine print more, but it seems like economycarrentals may be the way to go.

Has anybody used economycarrentals before? What has been your experience with them?[/QUOTE]

I have used economycarrentals several times with decent results. I have no idea what your on about in terms of citizenship, however. That issue never enters into it, only they ask which country is your resident land, not what your citizenship is.

Anyway, if you book to pick the car up at the Frankfurt Airport, you are likely to be given a car by Thrifty, whose office/car pick-up/drop off point is NOT at the Airport but several kilometres away, down the A5. This is inconvenient as you have to wait for a shuttle van to bring you there and have to add extra time when you want to drop it off. So here's a trick:

Book the car pick-up at the Hauptbahnhof (central rail station). Book the car drop off location as the Airport. This way you will be given a car from Sixt and you pick up the car directly at the Frankfurt Hbf. You take the S-bahn into the Hbf and just go upstairs to pick up the car. You can drop it off at the Airport when you are finished for no extra charge. Yes, you get insurance in the rental price, and these prices seem to be better than most other offers available. The only better prices are weekend offers (wochende angebot) at Hertz or Avis, as details in posts at the start of this year by Henio...

Ortos

Hi Nore,

At Dusseldorf Airport I usually rent a Smart with Sixt.com for 3 days 130€ with CDW and reduction of the excess to €350.

Unfortunately there is not the possbility to rent directly at the airport from Sixti.com wich is much cheaper.

I hope it is useful.

ITB

[QUOTE=N O R E]Gents,

Are any of you aware of any car hire deals out of Dusseldorf airport ? I've looked around at some of the major sites, and the minimum rate I've been able to find is about 100 Euros a day !! I don't know if it's because I'm a foreigner or what, but that does seem quite high.

Looking for something for my 3 day trip to Hessen next month. Let me know if you're aware of anything.

Thanks![/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=N O R E]I found a pretty decent deal on the hertz.de website, but apparently its only for residents of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (according to the Terms and Conditions). Wonder how/if I can get around that without too much trouble.[/QUOTE]


You should fill on the adress blank; the adress of your first hotel in Germany and that is all. I have done it several time, no hassle or complication, success is guaranteed. hertz.de has a special weekend package, you may have a car from Friday evening till Tuesday morning as low as 89 Euro, unlimited mileage and including CDW.

Good Luck

Just a word to the rental car theme.

It seems that many companies are strongly reducing unlimited mileage offerings. Both Hertz and Europcar are making those deals much more difficult to find these days.

Cheers,

Dedalus

[QUOTE=Dedalus]Just a word to the rental car theme.

It seems that many companies are strongly reducing unlimited mileage offerings. Both Hertz and Europcar are making those deals much more difficult to find these days.

Cheers,

Dedalus[/QUOTE]

Sixt also started to decrease the ordinary deals, for some 300 km/day. It is still enough but to have unlimited mileage give you more freedom to venture between clubs.

Cheers

[QUOTE=N O R E]I found a pretty decent deal on the hertz.de website, but apparently its only for residents of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (according to the Terms and Conditions). Wonder how/if I can get around that without too much trouble.[/QUOTE] Don't worry, I have done it more than 100 times all over Europe. Just give whatever address you want, it does not matter at all.

When renting direct from a "brand" name company, always go to the local site. I think I have explained in some old report how the pricing mechanism of those rental companies work and I don't want to repeat.

US residents will be encountering new problems with finance issues while traveling. Or it may seem like traveling 20-30 years ago.

It seems every financial institution in the world except those in the US are moving to debit and credit card with embedded chips. Eventually every machine in Europe accepting credit cards or debit cards will be checking for an embedded chip on your plastic card in addition to asking you for a PIN number. The following article tells you to just ask the shop or vendor to process the card using the older method but I can tell you that won't get you far. I traveled with a credit card with a failing or weak magnetic stripe a couple of years ago, trying to use it for DB tickets. The DB travel bureaus in larger cities took it in stride and did manual transactions. In the small and medium-sized towns, the customer service person had no knowledge and little patience to do the manual transactions.

The bottom line: US residents will eventually find their debit and credit cards unusable everywhere else in the world.

Here's a link to an article on this.

[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/travel/04pracchip.html[/url]

Rufus

[QUOTE=Rufus T Firefly]US residents will be encountering new problems with finance issues while traveling. Or it may seem like traveling 20-30 years ago.
Rufus[/QUOTE]

To follow up on my initial frantic note, the reports are a little murky. It appears the problem lies primarily with credit card transactions and less or perhaps not at all with debit cards. US credit card holders may have to insist on having their cards magnetically scanned. On the other hand, the reports suggest ATMs won't be a problem since they participate in Cirrus and related bank networks. Here are three URLs to look at...

[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/travel/04pracchip.html?_r=1[/url]

[url]http://intransit.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/readers-rip-on-credit-cards/[/url]

[url]http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/travel/04pracchip.html[/url]

Rufus

After reading Rufus's note, I immediately called up my bank. For the record, I'm Canadian, and not American, and we are using the chip and pin system up here :)

I was able to get my debit card switched over no problem, but the Visa would take some time to deliver. In any case, my bank assured me that major retailers overseas would not have an issue accepting the old magnetic cards, but they may require you to provide an additional piece of ID. This seems to be the case reading the links below as well.

It is only unless you are travelling to some 'off the beaten path' destinations that the old cards may be rejected. Cash is king, as they say, so always ensure to have some cash on hand, I suppose.