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.
After breakfast, the rest of us set out for the Sankt Johann
Park, which is located close to their house. Avinash hijacked Sagar’s bicycle,
Sagar took his scooter, and I hijacked Sundar’s bicycle. After spending about
an hour at the park, we got back and set off to join the festivities at the
kids’ school. The school is quite far from Sankt Johann but there is a direct
tram to get there in about 30 minutes. Avinash was thrilled to use the
touchscreen terminal at the tram stop to buy our tickets for us. 
