A Mitteleuropaisch Sojourn - Part 1, Day 1 - Mumbai-Munich-Basel

The Autobahn. The very term conjures up images of super smooth roads, and fast German cars travelling at insane speeds. Driving on the autobahn certainly had been a long standing dream of mine. And I got to live that dream, this June, during our Mitteleuropa-ean sojourn.

Planning the Trip

 In most previous years, we had started planning our summer vacations well in advance, with great clarity about where and when we wanted to go. As usual, I was keen on a driving holiday. Radhika and Avinash were perhaps not as keen. And hence it was already late March, and we had not yet decided where to go.

Then one day, our friends, Ravi and Mandavi, mentioned that they were planning to go to Austria in early July for their summer vacation. That got us thinking. Early July didn’t work for us since Avinash’s school reopened on July 10, and we wanted to have some time for him to recover after a vacation. But Ravi and Mandavi had the option of shifting their trip to start June 20 as well. That would imply that we could travel through Austria together, which would be great, since Avinash and Tanvi, their daughter, were of the same age.

Given our usual propensity to take 2 week vacations, we decided to also add on a trip through southern Germany before the Austrian vacation. Further, since Jayashree, Radhika’s cousin was now in Basel, we decided to visit Switzerland as well. Within 3-4 days, everything had fallen in place. We would fly to Zurich, rent a car, drive to Basel and spend 2-3 days there, drive through the Black Forest and Bavaria (with a few days in Munich), and then join Ravi and family at Innsbruck, and then proceed together to Salzburg and Vienna.

I was all set to book our flights, when I decided to attempt a car booking first, to see if I could rent a car in Zurich and return it at Vienna without incurring a ridiculous cost. Given that I would be driving through Swiss, German and Austrian mountain roads, and on the autobahns, I wanted a nice car. I promptly went to the Avis and Hertz sites to check the cost of renting a 3 series (or equivalent) for the two week period. And was shocked to find that the best price I got was almost CHF 2200. Almost INR 150,000 – the cost of a Nano- seemed ridiculous for a car rental. But even the more local rental agencies did not offer better deals. I was almost resigned to downgrading to the cheapest automatic I could find, when it struck me that Munich was not too far from the Swiss border, and that I should check rates ex Munich. And the difference was stark. The 3 series or equivalent was available for just EUR 890 – still expensive, but almost half the price of an ex Zurich rental. Flights to Munich were no more expensive than those to Zurich. And the extra 3 hours driving time was only a bonus for me.

Thus our itinerary fell in place. Fly to Munich (LH 765), drive to Basel, spend 3 nights there – spend a day driving through the Black Forest, then drive to Munich – spend 3 nights there, and then drive to Innsbruck via Neuschwanstein Castle. Spend 3 nights in Innsbruck, head out to Salzburg, spend three nights there, and then head to Vienna, from where we would fly back to Bombay via Munich. The only thing missing was an amusement park visit for Avinash, and to me, that seemed perfectly fine given that he has been to Legoland Windsor, Disneyworld Florida, Universal Studios Singapore and Sea World San Diego in the last 4 years.

Day 1 – June 13, 2014

Time flew quickly thereafter. We booked our hotels (at Baden Baden, Munich, Innsbruck and Vienna), and rented a villa at Salzburg. Just as we reached the airport for our flight to Munich, a thunderstorm hit Bombay. We thought the monsoon had arrived just as we were about to leave Bombay. Radhika and Avinash were certainly impressed by the beautiful, new T2 at Bombay airport (I had already made 4 trips through it). After spending some time looking at the various artefacts on display, and grabbing a cup of coffee, we waited for our flight to leave.

Some Snaps of T2 - Bombay

 

 

 

 

 

 

As usual for Lufthansa, our flight was on time. Unusually though, a group of European passengers (a Swede, a German, a half Spaniard – half Swede who lived in Munich, and a White Mexican woman married to an Indian) and one of the air hostesses started a loud conversation as soon as the flight levelled out. I managed to sleep despite the noise, but Radhika was disturbed, and woke me up to complain. Given that I had been reading a blog post about how Indian passengers tend to be noisy and inconsiderate just a few days before our journey, I did think that it was ironic that the silent Indian majority was being disturbed by a bunch of Europeans. At any rate, I managed to sleep once again, and the noisy troop quietened up once dinner was served.

Munich to Basel

After grabbing a quick breakfast at Munich airport, we crossed over to the other terminal where the Hertz rental counter was located. When we reached there, we were told that the 3 series we had booked was not available, but they instead upgraded us to a Volvo V70 station wagon. That did seem like a boring option to me, but since we did not have much of a choice, I accepted it, and headed out to the parking lot to collect the car. Hertz tried to convince me to pick up the zero deductible rider for our LDW insurance, but the cost (EUR 500) was too large relative to the deductible (EUR 1000) and I decided to take the risk of not taking the option. The V70 was brown in colour, had done about 9500 km so far, but had a number of scratches on it. The process of hunting for a Hertz rep, and getting him to give us a record indicating all the scratches took about 30 minutes – but I did not want to risk not having most of them recorded after my experience in Scotland where the rental agency (Europcar) would have nickled and dimed me on virtually invisible scratches.

The Route we took

 

While I had picked up a D_A_L_CH map for my Garmin, it turned out that I need not have bothered, the Volvo came equipped with built in satnav, and a number of other gizmos that I will describe later. We programmed our destination in, and tracked the route before starting – both to avoid any issues like the misdirection towards Toronto we suffered in Florida, and to confirm that the routing was through my preferred option that I had chosen on Google maps – the A96 South West towards Lindau and Austria, followed by the A1 across northern Switzerland. The distance to Basel was about 425 kms, and the GPS estimated we would take a tad over 4 hours. By the time we got all this done, it was past 9 am. As we started, I discovered the first of the gizmos in the car – in addition to showing the map on the central console, the car also displayed the upcoming turn instructions, and speed limits on the speedometer console. In fact, the entire instrument cluster was an electronic display, with the tachometer and speedometer being images on a screen rather than actual moving needles.

 Our Volvo - at a Rastplatz

 

As always before any of my foreign driving holidays, I had taken the trouble to try and understand the rules of the road for our destination. Given that we were going to pass through three different countries, there were more than the fair share of those. The one thing in common however was the emphasis on lane discipline – viz. that we keep right except when passing, and that we never ever pass on the left. As soon as I hit the A92 outside Munich airport, it turned out that those rules are strictly followed. While the initial section near the airport had a speed limit of 100 kmph, we pretty quickly passed an “Ende aller Streckenverbote” sign, which implied that we were now free to overtake and drive as fast as we liked. Initially, I was hesitant to go too fast – and ramped up my speed to a reasonably quick 150 kmph. I soon realized that the only vehicles I was passing was trucks, and spent most of my time in the slow lane, even though I was driving as fast as I had ever driven. Unfortunately, the pleasure of cruising at 150 kmph was short lived – over-head gantries soon announced the arrival of a 120 kmph zone, which was followed by a 100 kmph one, as we entered the ring road around Munich. I then discovered the next of the gizmos in the Volvo – the GPS was receiving data on the dynamic speed limits, since it very accurately reproduced what was displayed on the gantries. As we left Munich behind us and entered the unrestricted sections of the autobahn, I gained confidence, and gradually upped my cruising speed – 160, 165 and then to 175 kmph. It was then that I noticed the other remarkable thing about our car – the car was a diesel, and we were happily cruising at over a 170 kmph, listening to music from Radhika’s iPod, but with virtually no engine or road noise entering the car. I was amazed at the quality of the sound insulation, and only later realized that the car was equipped with active noise cancellation, which clearly worked very well. Being a Volvo, the car was obviously equipped with various other safety features. While cruising on the autobahn, I noticed a set of dim red lights projected onto the windscreen. After a while, I realized that the lights became brighter as I was approaching the vehicle in front, and disappeared if I dropped a safe distance behind it. Later on, I had one experience where the lights came on extremely brightly, and an alarm blared – when I had resorted to Indian style late braking behind slowing vehicles in front of me.

Despite heading away from Munich towards the Lake Constance region at the border of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, traffic was not smooth all the way. There were road works every 20-30 kms, but the way they were managed was amazing. Typically, there would be a dynamic speed limit sign that gets the speed down to 120 kmph, followed by another one about 5 km out getting the speed down to 100 kmph, and then one where the road works started getting the speed down to 80 kmph. While the normal sections of the autobahn had wide lanes, lane widths were low in sections where road works were on. These sections brought out the quality of driver training in Germany. The truckers were able to keep their vehicles centered within a lane that was barely 1 foot wider than their trucks. I tended to stick to the wider right lane and follow the trucks in these sections, even though several cars were passing them (at slightly above the limit) in the narrower left lanes of the construction zones.  

The only surprising thing on this route was the absence of fully equipped service areas. There were frequent “Rastplatzs”, places to park for a while equipped with benches and loos, but the fully equipped service areas or “Rasthofs” were few and far between. After driving for about an hour and a half, we arrived at a Rastplatz where we took our first break (about 45 minutes in all) – and also had a meal of idlis we had carried from home even though it was just 10:45 local time. (after all, it was past lunch time in Bombay)

About half an hour after we restarted, we arrived at the Germany Austria border. For an Indian used to the long lines of trucks at state borders (or even at the Octroi naka between Vashi and Bombay), it was amazing to find that only a “Welcome to Austria” overhead sign (and flash on the GPS screen) identified the border between two countries. Of course, these signs are of critical importance – because Austria has a national speed limit of 130 kmph on the Autobahns, and extremely heavy speeding fines. Shortly after the border, we pulled over to purchase the Vignette or toll sticker that is needed for using Austrian (and Swiss) highways. I had the choice of picking up either a 10 day Austrian vignette for EUR 8.5 or a two month one for EUR 24.8. I chose the latter – deciding that EUR 7.8 is a worthwhile price for not having to stop again. The Swiss vignette was more expensive from my perspective EUR 34 valid for the rest of the calendar year. So clearly, the guy who rented my car after me was going to benefit at my expense.

Immediately after exiting the station where we purchased the toll tickets, we entered a massive tunnel – the 6.8 km long Pfander tunnel. Once again the relentless lane and speed discipline that people followed made driving through it a complete breeze. Shortly after the tunnel, we exited the Rheintal Expressway and entered a set of B roads which took us across the Rhine into Switzerland, and onto the A1 motorway. We were keen on getting to Basel as quickly as possible, and thought the views of Lake Constance were tempting, we stuck to our task, arriving at Jayashree’s place in Sankt Johann’s Vorstadt by 2 PM. It had taken us 5 hours door to door, and given that we halted for almost an hour, we had averaged about 105 kmph (including a couple of wrong turns in Basel). The fuel tank was still over half full – and the MID indicated a range to empty of another 500 kms. Even for a 70 litre tank, this implied a potential fuel economy of about 13 kmpl despite the very high speeds I had driven at.

Beautiful Swiss Countryside

Jayashree and Sundar’s Place

Basel is an amazing little city – it houses the headquarters of some the largest and most iconic MNCs such Novartis, Roche, and Syngenta, but still retains a small town feel about it and has a population of just 195,000 (500,000 including neighbouring municipalities in Switzerland and across France and Gerrmany). Switzerland’s entry into the Schengen zone makes most sense around Basel – its airport is located in France, while the railway station has sections devoted to trains from all three countries.

Jayashree and Sundar’s place is located in Sankt Johanns-Vorstadt, a beautiful central Basel neighbourhood, and overlooks the Rhine. Mami (Sundar Athimber’s mom) welcomed us, and served us a delicious lunch. Jayashree was out preparing for a function at the kids’ school, but Sundar came home early from work. I went with him and parked the car in a nearby underground parking lot (CHF 25 / day, if you must ask).

The View From Jayashree and Sundar's Place

 

 

Later that evening, Sundar took Radhika, Avinash and me for a walk through Basel. His goal was to walk all the way to the tri-nation border where Switzerland, France and Germany meet – but we were tired after our long journey, and hence chose to take a tram instead. After visiting the tri-nation border (and what a peaceful border, without any check points it is), we returned towards their house, and this time chose to cross the river using a cable powered boat. These boats are quite interesting – they use the power of the river current and the laws of physics to get across the river in both directions without any mechanical power just based on the angle of inclination with respect to the flow.

 

A Few Pics During our Walk

 

 

 
 
The Trination Border
 

By the time we got back, Jayashree, Soumya and Sagar were home, and we had a great time chatting with them, and planning our activities for the next two days.