On the Road in Europe: Six Months behind the Wheel

At the request of several friends, we have written the following description of the mechanics of our driving trip through Europe in 2006:

ON THE ROAD IN EUROPE: SIX MONTHS BEHIND THE WHEEL

As our 65th birthdays approached, we decided to celebrate senior citizenship by spending six months--April to September of 2006--in Europe, seeing friends, visiting old haunts and exploring new destinations. Our projected destinations would take us from Scotland to Gibraltar and from Spain to Ukraine. No strangers to the continent, we had spent three years together in Moldova, where Todd had been U.S. ambassador in the 1990’s after serving as a Foreign Service officer in Munich, Geneva, and Moscow, and Georgia had spent a year in Aberdeen, Scotland. Languages were not a serious problem, for the Foreign Service had taught one or both of us Romanian, Spanish, German, French, and Russian. Much more challenging was a strategy for traveling securely and comfortably within our pensioner’s budget.

Buying a Car

Driving looked like our best bet for transportation, for a car would give us the flexibility to go where we wanted when we wanted. European traffic was not a deterrent, for we were quite used to German autobahns, eastern European potholes, and city street grids laid out in the 15th century. Cost was a consideration, however.

One option was to buy a new car with US specifications and ship it back to the United States at the end of our trip. Two factors argued against this approach, however. First, we had recently purchased a new car with which we were quite satisfied. Second, we were concerned that a new vehicle would be a target for car thieves, who present a significant threat in central and eastern Europe.

Rental was another option, but cost was a deterrent. The international rental companies do not generally offer contracts for six months, and inquiries made by European friends suggested that local agencies would charge prohibitively high rates.

We decided, therefore, that we wanted to buy a used car in good condition, license and insure it in Europe, and sell it at the end of our trip. The two challenges with this approach were finding a reliable car to buy and getting it licensed and insured. The solutions came from an old friend, a German lawyer, whose clients included a Munich used car dealer. He recommended that we buy a Volkswagen Passat station wagon as a good compromise between the maneuverability necessary in European cities, the speed and stability appropriate for the autobahn, and the capacity required for our four suitcases and several smaller bags. He also suggested a diesel engine for better mileage (make that kilometrage) and fuel costing less than gasoline in almost all of Europe. After we agreed to these parameters, he e-mailed photos of a 2002 Passat his dealer client had found with new tires (a real plus!) and 115,000 kilometers on the odometer. We told our friend to go ahead so that the car would be waiting for us at the Munich airport.

Licensing the vehicle in our names proved to be impossible, however. European jurisdictions generally require an automobile owner to present a residence document as part of the registration process, and there was no way for visiting Americans to comply. Again, our German friend came to the rescue, this time by offering to register the Passat in his name and giving us a notarized authorization to drive it. As we later discovered, this authorization had to be presented along with the vehicle registration document when crossing borders in eastern Europe.

The Passat turned out to be a great choice. We had it serviced only once, at the mid-point of our trip, with a potential mechanical problem corrected at that time. The ubiquity of Volkswagen service was another plus, for when a taillight went out in Moldova, we had it replaced by the VW dealer in Chisinau. There were no other tire or mechanical problems in almost 30,000 kilometers of driving.

Fuel was expensive, costing in France, for example, around 1.20 euros a liter ($5.90 a gallon) for diesel. We learned a few tricks, however, such as filling up at the border if pump prices were relatively low in the country we were exiting (e.g., leaving Spain for France) and finding a supermarket (e.g., Carrefour) offering fuel at its gas station as a loss leader.

Automatic car washes provided some interesting challenges, especially where the washing mechanism moved and the vehicle remained stationary. In the Netherlands, for example, we failed to decipher the Dutch instructions completely and came close to being washed along with our Passat.

Calling Home, European Numbers and Each Other

We decided that two cell phones were a must for occasional calls to and from the United States, to make travel arrangements in Europe, and to contact each other. Our on-line research indicated that the least expensive alternative was the service offered by ekit (www.ekit.com), a company providing Europe-wide connectivity with a single telephone number. Ekit required us to have European-frequency GSM phones that were “unlocked” (i.e., not limited to a single service provider’s SIM card). Fortunately, the Motorola GSM phones we had for North American service met the frequency requirements, and T-Mobile, our service provider, told us how to unlock them. When we reached Europe, ekit explained, we would have to insert the SIM card the company furnished for each of our phones and check periodically by calling e-kit (toll-free) to insure that we had adequate minutes remaining on our cards to make calls. (There is no charge for incoming calls with ekit and most other European plans.) If not, we could recharge with our credit card by phoning a toll-free number or visiting the ekit website.

This arrangement worked fairly well, but only after a hitch at the beginning of our travels. After following the unlocking instructions for both phones in the United States, we successfully tested a new e-kit SIM card in only one of them and assumed that the other would work as well. Unfortunately, after reaching Europe we discovered that the other phone was still locked and, despite coaching from T-Mobile, Motorola and ekit, we were unable to unlock it. The inexpensive solution was to buy a cheap unlocked phone in Munich, where they were readily available. Other North American travelers might find it easier to skip the complicated unlocking exercise and plan on buying an unlocked phone on their arrival in Europe.

Given our limited use of the phones, the total expense of ekit service was affordable. (We have not quoted the rates here because the company’s price schedule has changed since our return.) Ekit’s biggest drawback, we felt, was the lack of any accounting on the company’s website for the charges made to our two accounts; we could only learn the balances remaining. As changes are continuous in cell phone services, we would certainly reinvestigate the options available before any future extended stay abroad.

Cell phone reception was excellent virtually everywhere we traveled, including eastern Europe. We were able to recharge the phone batteries at our hotel or with an adapter plugged into the cigarette lighter of our car.

Travel Blog

A major concern on such a long trip was to feel connected with our children and grandchildren and help them feel connected to us. As an alternative to postcard writing, we told family and friends via e-mail that we would be posting reports of our adventures, with photos, on a blog we had established free of charge with Blogger (www.blogger.com), a part of the Google empire. They could read our postings by visiting the site at www.stewartsramble.blogspot.com and send comments to us by e-mail. (Blogger permits readers to post comments on the site, but virtually all our readers found the procedure too cumbersome.) The site also listed our cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and itinerary, which we updated as our trip progressed.

With this promise out there, we had to make good. Every week or so we selected some 14 photos from the many we had uploaded each evening to our Mac PowerBook G4 laptop from our digital camera, an inexpensive Fuji FinePix A303. Next we wove a narrative around these photos covering a segment of the trip. However, the challenge then came in uploading the text and pictures to our blog.

Internet Connectivity

The biggest problem we encountered in Europe was finding high-speed connections for our laptop so that we could upload our blog postings. It was not difficult to get on line from other computers, either in internet cafes or hotels, which frequently made internet-capable computers available to guests. Connecting our Mac to the internet was much more challenging, however, even though the laptop could communicate with the internet either wirelessly or by cable.

Solutions varied from location to location. For example, many of our hotels in both western and eastern Europe advertised wireless or Ethernet cable access for laptops from their rooms. This connection was generally offered by a local internet service provider (ISP), which levied a per-day or per-hour charge payable to the hotel or directly to the ISP’s website via credit card. It appeared, however, that many of the local wireless networks had been recently installed, for their range was often limited to the hotel’s lower floors and the staff seemed unfamiliar with their operation. Prices varied widely: a Gibraltar hotel charged 25 pounds sterling per calendar day (we didn’t bite), and a Dutch rural inn provided a strong signal at no charge.

However, many smaller hotels had no internet access for our laptop, and in these cities we were obliged to search for a commercial connection elsewhere. (Free outdoor wi-fi hot spots supposedly existed, but we never found one with an adequate signal.) Lists of cafes with hot spots appear on the web for European cities, but their entries were frequently outdated. We found it much more expeditious to ask at our hotel or a tourist bureau (although some bureaus were totally clueless) or simply look for a sign advertising wireless connections. In other cases we simply entered an internet cafe with wired internet connections and asked if we could plug our laptop into their cable in place of one of their computers. Some refused, but others agreed (at their usual per hour charge, of course).

Experience at friends’ homes also varied. In some we could simply connect our Mac to our hosts’ cable, but in others the local ISP would not recognize our computer’s signal.

Despite our difficulties, it seemed clear that wireless connectivity is growing in Europe. In fact, our small Paris hotel announced by e-mail after our departure that they would soon have a wireless internet connection in every room. We suspect that even by next summer the availability of wireless internet access will be much wider than we experienced.

Money and Credit Cards

We carried credit cards from American Express and Mastercard, Visa debit cards for dollar accounts at two U.S. banks, and a debit card for the euro account we had opened on our arrival at Deutsche Bank in Munich. Mastercard and Visa assessed a one percent fee on non-dollar charges and cash withdrawals while American Express charged two percent. It was generally advantageous, therefore, to use our Deutsche Bank card for charges and cash withdrawals in the euro zone. The exception came in restaurants, where the three percent rebate on our American Express card more than compensated for the two percent charge.

ATM fees are hefty in Europe—generally around five euros per withdrawal, regardless of amount—if the ATM does not belong to your bank. As Deutsche Bank has seemingly few branches outside Germany, we generally withdrew 300 euros or more, unless the ATM imposed a smaller limit.

The euro was a great convenience in obviating the need for money exchange in most of western Europe. When leaving non-euro countries, we generally avoided converting our remaining local currency by using it to buy fuel for our Passat at a service station near the border.

Hotels and Restaurants

Some nights on our trip were spent at the homes of friends. At other destinations we generally made hotel reservations by phone or internet two weeks or so in advance of arrival. Our most important resource was the Red Michelin Guide covering the country in question, which we found to be quite reliable in its descriptions of establishments and prices. An added bonus was the inclusion of city maps, which we found indispensable in finding our lodgings. Michelin does not yet cover eastern Europe, and there we relied principally on the Rough Guides, which combine sightseeing information with recommendations for accommodations and restaurants.

Using the guides, we were usually able to find accommodations for less than 100 euros a night, including breakfast, which was often an extensive buffet. Most of our hotels were designated by Michelin as “quite comfortable,” the lowest category above guesthouses, but they were invariably clean with a TV set, private bathrooms and showers. To our surprise and delight, the mattresses were uniformly excellent.

When available, we tried to book rooms in hotels Michelin classed as “pleasant” or, especially, as “Bib Hotels” for exceptional value. These establishments were usually on the outskirts of a city and normally offered lower rates than downtown locations, sometimes with free parking. We could then drive into town or, more frequently, take public transportation to avoid the hassle and expense of parking. In the Netherlands, for example, we stayed in a small beach resort inn halfway between Amsterdam and The Hague, used our car to visit both cities, but still could swim and bicycle at our resort location.

In other big cities, however, a downtown location was often the most feasible option. We occasionally stayed at Ibis hotels, usually recommended by Michelin, which form the most economical chain operated by Accor, the French hotel company. Like their British equivalent, the Premier Travel Inns, these hotels are completely predictable, except for national variations in their restaurant menus. Predictability can be boring, of course, but from time to time we welcomed it.

Air conditioning was a problem during a mid-summer European heat wave. We had made reservations before the temperature spiked, and—truth to tell—there were few reasonably priced hotels in the area we were visiting that had air conditioning. Our solution was the purchase of an electric fan, which we used sporadically for the rest of the trip.

Our hotel stays generally ranged between two and four nights. With a few exceptions, we avoided one-night stays to avoid the hassle of packing and unpacking. We rented friends’ apartments in two instances, but commercial rentals were not an option as landlords generally require at least a week’s stay.

Michelin also pointed us to fine meals at affordable prices with the door open for an occasional splurge at starred establishments. Especially attractive were restaurants with “Bib Gourmand” ratings in the Red Guide to indicate exceptional value. We generally eschewed the wine list in favor of the house wine, where available, and were rarely disappointed. Our general practice was to call ahead for reservations, and by and large we had no difficulty getting a table. If our hotel offered a demi-pension rate (i.e., including breakfast and dinner), we generally took it, and we normally ate in our hotel dining room if we arrived late in the day after a long drive. If the hotel had no dining room and there was no Michelin recommendation, we often asked the desk clerk for advice with good results.

Our eating habits settled into a routine designed to keep us nourished—but not overly so. We generally ate a large breakfast at our hotel, where it was often included in the room price, and limited ourselves at lunch to fruit and crackers, often eaten in a park or roadside stop along with local mineral water. Dinner was our main meal, generally preceded by a glass of wine from a store-bought bottle in our room. Our one dietary weakness was Werther’s candy, which we bought in considerable quantities and stocked in the car door.

Public Transportation and Parking

Wherever feasible, we left our car in a long-term lot and used public transportation to travel around a city. Most major cities offered tourists some kind of multi-trip ticket at a reduced price, and we took advantage of these deals. Their details were frequently complex, however, requiring considerable study of fine print or advice from a knowledgeable local. Fares were usually comparable to those of U.S. urban transport systems.

Municipal parking lots were generally operated on a per-hour or per-day basis familiar to Americans, albeit at rates approaching New York’s in major cities, but most street parking required the purchase of a ticket for the number of hours desired from a coin-operated machine on the block. As parking enforcers were ubiquitous, we were good citizens and conscientiously paid our fees, which were usually significantly higher than most U.S. cities charge for metered parking. Not one parking ticket in six months!

Car theft and break-ins can be a serious problem, particularly in eastern and southern Europe. We used guarded lots, when available, for overnight parking and kept whatever possessions left in the Passat out of sight under the roller shade in the rear compartment. When we were obliged to park overnight on the street, we generally took all luggage with us to our room.

Maps and Guide Books

Our basic map was the Europe Travel Atlas published in 1:700,000 scale by ADAC, the German automobile club. While adequate for distance route planning and travel in less populated areas, this atlas was not sufficiently detailed for navigation in the dense highway nets of, say, the Netherlands. We supplemented it in these cases by buying smaller scale national or regional maps at gas stations.

Both the ADAC atlas and the Michelin Red Guides contain city maps, but we often found that it was necessary to obtain more detailed versions as well. Sometimes we could obtain a free map from the local tourist office, but on other occasions we had to buy one just to find our way into the city. This was the case, for example, in Kiev, where we fruitlessly searched for a map at five service stations before finally finding one at a street kiosk on the edge of town.

For sightseeing we generally relied on the Michelin Green Guides, the DK Eyewitness Travel Guides, and (in eastern Europe) the Rough Guides, sometimes in combination with one another. For Spain we used Penelope Casas’ excellent Discovering Spain: An Uncommon Guide along with James Mitchener’s Iberia, still relevant despite its publication in 1968. In England we joined the National Trust, which gave us free admission and an excellent guidebook to their historic properties; we visited enough of these sites and their Scottish equivalents to more than pay for our membership. Finally, we supplemented the guidebooks we had bought with free brochures from local tourist offices.

Laundry

We had brought along light weight underwear and hosiery that could be washed out in a hotel sink and dried overnight in the shower stall, despite an occasional notice that this activity was “formellement interdit.” Heavier clothes were consigned to hotel laundries, laundromats (either drop-off or self-service) and friends’ washers and dryers. The great majority of our clothes were wash-and-wear, but we occasionally had to use local cleaners and laundries for dry cleaning and clothes that required pressing.


Recreation

Exercise was no problem, for we spent most of our days walking from one tourist attraction to the next. On occasion we took real hikes, e.g., climbing the Rock of Gibraltar, but these were rare. We took advantage of the wonderful bicycling infrastructure in the Netherlands with some long trips on rented wheels and also found opportunities in Luxembourg and on Germany’s Ruegen Island on the Baltic Sea. (Only in that last location did we get thoroughly soaked!) Between this regimen and light lunches, we returned from Europe no heavier than we had weighed in April.

We tried to include musical performances in our itinerary, although much of the European culture industry shuts down during the summer months. In some cities friends were kind enough to arrange tickets for us. In others we found events in the newspapers or though the tourist bureau, such as a concert of the Dresden Philharmonic. Churches were excellent and inexpensive venues for music, both at organ concerts and worship services, which we enjoyed in Romania and Germany.

Self-Maintenance

We had brought along several claim forms for overseas medical treatment from Blue Cross/Blue Shield, but mercifully we did not have to use a single one. All our health problems were minor, and nostrums were available from local pharmacies, where staff members were happy to make recommendations.

Toothpaste, deodorant, shaving cream, etc., were universally available throughout our travels, almost always with familiar brand names and quality. Worried about the long-term reliability of dual voltage models, we bought a 220 V. hair dryer in Munich at the start of our trip at a price comparable to what we would have paid in the United States for a 110 V. dryer.

Haircuts were always an adventure. Georgia’s strategy was to visit the salon in a first-class hotel; although she discovered that English was not necessarily spoken there, the results were very good. Todd’s technique was to get a recommendation from our hotel or sometimes just wander into a local barbershop; all his results were satisfactory, but he is proudest of a $2.80 haircut (with tip!) from a female barber in a provincial Romanian town.

Defending the Home Front

In planning the trip we gave considerable thought to ways of meeting our obligations at home and maintaining our house while we were on the road. Mercifully, the house maintenance agenda was shortened by our homeowners association’s responsibility for snow removal, gardening, water, garbage, and exterior maintenance, but we still had to concern ourselves with the interior maintenance and the remaining utilities.

We canceled our cable TV and internet services but maintained, for a small monthly fee, our e-mail account so that we could receive and send messages abroad by visiting our ISP’s website. Our domestic mobile phone account was also canceled as we were not interested in reactivating our numbers upon our return. However, since we did want to keep our home telephone number, we suspended the service and paid a small periodic charge for the privilege of reactivating; a caller to our number was told that the line had been temporarily disconnected.

We turned down the thermostats on our heater and water heater before our departure, disconnected all electronic appliances, turned off the ice-maker in our kitchen refrigerator, disconnected and propped open the back-up refrigerator in our garage, and took out the back-up batteries in clocks to prevent possible leakage. (We failed, however, to take the cartridges out of our printer, and resulting ink seepage damaged the mechanism irremediably.) The gas and electric services remained operational, but we had arranged to have the monthly billings deducted from our bank account or charged to one of our credit cards. (Our insurance and credit card bills and the small monthly charges for residual telephone and e-mail service were handled in the same way.) Our recycling service was suspended. We prepaid other bills that would come due during our absence, such as our homeowner association dues and our automobile registration.

In addition to these precautions we monitored our bank and credit card accounts on a monthly basis via the internet to ensure there was no unexpected activity. Nonetheless, we feared that we had forgotten something or that a totally unexpected demand would arise in the form, say, of an audit notice from the IRS. To deal with such eventualities and check our house for possible problems, we engaged a friend to pick up our mail once a week from the post office where we have a box, throw out catalogs and other junk mail, take the remainder to our house, inspect it for problems, and let us know by e-mail if any urgent-looking letters had arrived.

We left our car in the garage with the battery disconnected. Our house-minder had the keys in the case it had to be moved.

As a further precaution, we gave our neighbors, friends in the neighborhood, and our homeowners association management a letter with our contact information and our house-minder’s coordinates in case disaster struck.

These precautions worked surprisingly well. No federal agents were waiting for us with handcuffs on our return. The house was in perfect condition, and the car started up immediately once we had reconnected the battery. Our financial obligations had been promptly and completely met—with one exception, and that is another story.

Dealing with Disaster

As the late Gilda Radner famously observed, “There’s always something,” and in our case it was the theft of Todd’s wallet at a Florence bus stop early in our trip.

As recommended, Todd kept his wallet in a front pocket of his trousers, but at the bus stop he had removed and reinserted it while searching for his bus ticket. While his hands were checking other pockets for the ticket, a thief took advantage of his inattention to lift the wallet. Todd noticed its absence on the bus and checked frantically and fruitlessly around his seat. We then got off the bus and started calling the companies that had issued our credit and debit cards, using the contact telephone numbers on Georgia’s cards, to request their cancellation.

We discovered that our Mastercards and Visa cards had been issued with the same number for both of us so that Georgia’s cards became invalid with the cancellation of Todd’s. Since Georgia’s American Express card had a separate number, it remained valid for making purchases, but we could not use it to withdraw cash from ATM machines as we had never activated that option. Fortunately, we were still awaiting the debit card for the euro account we had opened at Deutsche Bank. Miraculously, it arrived at our Florence apartment the day following the theft so we again had access to cash.

Todd’s U.S. driver’s license was also in the stolen wallet, but he had brought along his German license, issued in 1963 with lifetime validity. We can only speculate as to what a traffic policeman would have thought of the discrepancy between the fresh-faced young man in its photograph and Todd’s current appearance, for he never had to show the license in six months of European driving. However, the car registration was also in the wallet, and that document had to be replaced before we began to cross central and eastern European borders, where a “vehicle passport” is obligatory.

At the instruction of the U.S. Consulate in Florence, we visited the central Carabinieri post in Florence to report the theft. There we were received by a very courteous and efficient officer who spoke excellent English, partly as a result of service with international peacekeeping teams in Bosnia and Central America. When Todd explained we could not be sure that the wallet had been stolen, rather than simply lost, the officer replied in a sad, bored voice, “Oh, it was stolen all right,” and gave us a disquisition on the inability of Italian justice to deal effectively with petty criminals. He completed a lengthy report with circumstances of the theft, the contents of the wallet, and our Munich address in case the wallet turned up. We faxed a copy to our Munich friend so that he could apply for a replacement vehicle registration document, which reached us well in advance of our drive into eastern Europe.

We requested our credit and debit card companies to send replacement cards to us by Fedex at the home of Swiss friends we would be visiting later in our itinerary. This process was not error-free, unfortunately, due to internal communication problems at one bank so that the cards had to be reissued and sent to the address of other friends in Britain. It took some seven weeks, therefore, for all replacement cards to reach us.

The only lingering problem involved periodic charges to our American Express card account. We had instructed our insurance carrier to charge to that account the monthly balance due, using Todd’s card number. When the replacement card was issued, we neglected to advise the insurance company of the new number and American Express rejected the subsequent charges to the old number, explaining that the card had been canceled. When we returned to Sun Valley, we found a notice warning that all our policies would be canceled if we did not pay a large outstanding balance immediately.

To discourage further theft, Georgia presented Todd with a handsome leather shoulder bag, with zippered pockets difficult to access, which could be gripped in a crowd like a football. Into it went his new wallet, his passport, the car registration, his cell phone, his driver’s license, and an umbrella. We judged that the risk of losing everything was outweighed by the concentrated attention Todd would bring to the bag. That judgment proved sound—or perhaps pickpockets in other cities were not as adept as their Florentine compatriots.


Thoughts for Other Travelers

The key to our trip was the ability to buy, albeit indirectly, a reliable used car. After returning we have looked for means to make this option available at a reasonable price to North American travelers without good friends in Europe. To date, however, we have been unable to identify a feasible method. This leaves only two options open to travelers planning an extended driving tour of Europe: purchase of a new vehicle for export to North America at the end of the tour and an expensive long-term rental.

Since our return many friends have asked what we would have done differently in organizing our trip. The answer is very little—with the obvious exception of purchasing a shoulder bag for Todd before our departure. Clearly, however, some of the decisions we made, while right for us, would not suit other travelers. Nonetheless, we hope that our experiences will prove useful to others in planning an extensive trip through Europe.