First time Driving for transfer (Munich-Obergurgl) in April-advice?

A snowHead

Hello all, despite having skied many weeks I've always been on either a package or sorted a shared transfer for my trips.

We're going to Obergurgl in April and due to the time of the season it seems there are very limited flights from Manchester to the regional airports over there i.e. Innsbruck.

As a result we're flying into Munich and plan to hire a car which I believe is circa 3 hours to resort. Now no one has a crystal ball to predict the weather, but expect on average it would be OK although it's high enough that there could still plenty of snow falling.

Just wanted some insight from previous and/or regular winter travellers who've used/use Munich? Looks straight forward-any preferable routes? I don't expect they supply winter tyres or chains? How are the Austrians in getting/keeping the roads open to the resorts?

We'll be travelling the weekend of the 11th April.

Thanks in Advance.

A snowHead

You'll need a carnet to drive in Austria. We bought ours from a petrol station near the border.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

@Fruity, Cheers off to Google what that is!

You need to Login to know who's really who.

Carnets only required for Austrian motorways, you would be able to avoid these on the run from Munich. The drive itself is fine, highly unlikely you would run into any problems weather or traffic wise. Drive south on the motorway from Munich pick up the Innsbruck signs, sat nav the rest, route takes you through solden which is a high resort and popular at this time of year so the roads are kept well. Nice time of year for the drive.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

@Fruity, @summerseat, it's called a Vignette and a 10-day one costs 8.70 Euro.

@Bene, Depending on which way you decide to get to Innsbruck, you may or may not need one. It is possible to get away without one, but do not try and drive on the Motorways or Schnellstrasse (which includes the Fern Pass Schnellstrasse) without one. If you are caught, it is 120 Euro on the spot or 300 euro if you have to pay later for whatever reason.

Traffic over the Fern Pass route can be quite heavy at times - Saturdays when Europe decides to head south for whatever reason. Dates are critical to be honest when it comes to route planning.
wink

You'll need to Register first of course.

Jeepers. Buy a vignette for God's sake. €8.70 is less than a drink and Gulaschsuppe for lunch and you can Autobahn it all the way to the Oetztal valley turn off.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

@Samerberg Sue, that's the word! It (carnet) sounded right in my head!

After all it is free

We were in St Johann in Tirol for a September wedding, it was so odd seeing it in 'summer' conditions...

We fly regularly to Munich and then via hire car to resort. Obviously our trips are not as frequent as those who live out there, so we don't know all the non-motorway routes, so we buy the vignette and don't have to worry about avoiding the Austrian motorways. You will see the sign "VIGNETTE" at the entrance to service stations as you approach the border.
We have generally found the roads and signposting to be good simple and straightforward (but I do recall Samerberg Sue? mentioning a lot of roadworks and motorway upgrading (was that last year?)
Car hire at Munich Airport we have found exceptionally variable. We have in the past used one of the internet agencies (I think it was HolidayAutos) and found that the company we needed to collect the car from at the airport was totally inadequate. Queries with everything from whether Winter Tyres were included or had been prepaid, additional insurance (we have an annual policy with insurance4carhire.com which is much cheaper) additional drivers etc etc This led to long long delays in collecting the car. We now pay the small amount extra and use Avis which includes Winter Tyres and takes less than 2 minutes.
If it is your first time hiring a car then use your mobile phone camera to take photos of any damage marks scratches etc and show them to the hire company before you get in the car.
We usually fly Lufthansa and if we arrive back at Munich well in advance of the flight home, we check in our hold baggage (you can do this 24 hours before your flight) and return the hire car and then get the train from the airport for a spell of relaxation in Munich. Only if you have lots of spare time though
Have a good trip. We've been doing the flights / car hire for over 10 years and much prefer it for the flexibility it gives you.

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

@JohnHSmith, no major roadworks at the moment as they are all put on hold for the winter. However I noticed new temporary lane markings along a section of the A10 (around the St Johann im Pongau junction heading north) which reminded me that the roadworks season will be starting up again soon.

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

Winter tyres are mandatory till april 15th in Austria

snow reports

@Bene,
The vignette is not difficult to get you just need to go to a petrol station near the border, if going over the Fernpass there is one near the top.
I have been able to get cars with winter tires via Autoeurope.
One thing to watch out for when returning the car is that some of the people who check the car back in will find scratches that are virtually invisible to the human eye, Munich airport seems far worse than elsewhere for this. Take out extra insurance.

@JohnHSmith, Thanks for the comprehensive reply fellow Cumbrian wink

I must admit I usually book through an agent when it comes to hiring a car so will bare that in mind. How do you confirm if the car will have winter tyres or not? We're flying Lufthansa, not the cheapest on the face of it but by time you're getting ski carriage etc pretty good value and flight times that suit us.

You know it makes sense.

Bene - take out excess insurance in the UK before you travel, it is much much cheaper than paying a hire car company who will charge a comparatively high daily rate.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Bene, if you go via an agency you can usually see what is included and what is not. Most (but not all) say that amongst your options such as child seat / sat nav / roof rack there is the option for Winter Tyres together with the cost. In the same way that Lufthansa can be cheaper than squeezyjet etc, we find Avis / Hertz etc can sometimes - not always - be cheaper. I have just gone to the HolidayAutos website. It helpfully tells you who the provider will be. For the week that we are renting a car, we could rent a VW Polo for £113.16. The provider is Global Drive. If you select that car and scroll down, you get the option of adding chains / child seat / etc One of the options is a Winter Package at a cost of £206.95 extra taking the total cost to over £320 - which may include chains and other things which I do not need. I can't see an option for just Winter Tyres.
Still with HolidayAutos there is the option of a VW Polo but this time the provider is Avis. The price is £143.68 but if you look at the "extras" you see that it includes Winter Tyres.

A snowHead

A snowHead

@Alastair Pink, Thanks for the info. I've ordered myself a Vignette, for the sake of 2E postage it's one less thing to worry about.

Confused by this

Mandatory Winter Equipment:
In winter conditions the use of four winter tires or snow chains on at least two tires is now mandatory in Austria between 1 November and 15 April.

It would appear that all the car hired in Munich have winter tyres as standard up until the 15th March after which it's at request for a charge.

@JohnHSmith, Would you tend to just go for a small car? There's not a huge amount of extra cost for a Focus Estate or Mondeo Estate- both on a 'or similar' basis. We'll have three sets of skis as I usually take my more piste orientated skis and fat skis to cover the bases conditions wise.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Winter tyres are also mandatory in that part of Germany I believe. The difficulty arose with us a few years ago when we ended up at a car hire desk (can remember where it is but not what it was called) having booked through AutoEurope or HolidayAutos or someone, and they wanted to charge us extra for Winter tyres. We said that we had pre-booked and pre-paid for that, they said we hadn't. We said OK we will take another car without Winter tyres. They said we had skis with us and they wouldn't let us. It all descended into a very very long argument. The annoying thing was that the people in front of us had just had exactly the same argument and we could see that the people behind us were going to be doing the same.
So the car that you will get will have Winter tyres. You can go for what looks cheapest and you may well just sail straight through. Or they may try to charge you an extra £200. Or you might have a long argument. In the end it's a personal choice. As a student I would have gone for the cheapest and would have been prepared to argue it out. Now I pay £20 extra and go through Avis / Hertz etc making sure that Winter tyres are included. And I print it out and take it with me.
Car size? Sorry, that's a personal choice again. There are 8 of us going in March and we will hire 2 x 5 seater estate cars. Cosy but it's a 3 hour transfer for us too and we can cope for that length of time. In resort it is likely we will split up and go different ways on different days so we won't all be in the cars again until the return journey. If there are just two of you, my choice would be to go for the smaller car, but it's a matter of personal preference.

You need to Login to know who's really who.

@Bene, You say you have three sets of skis with you. If you intend hiring a small car with a ski rack be aware that the rental companies usually charge a significant premium for the ski rack e.g Enterprise through the auto-europe link I gave above charge 10 Euros per day extra. It may be better to get a bigger vehicle which allows you to put the skis inside without the need for a ski rack. On a recent trip with two friends and a total of two skis and one snowboard I'd originally booked a Passat Estate, but at the Enterprise desk they actually upgraded me at no extra cost to a Ford S-Max which was ideal. Smile

I see that Enterprise (through the auto-europe link I posted earlier) are currently doing weekly rental of an S-Max (with winter tyres) for £187.30 which isn't bad

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

@Alastair Pink, Plan is to get something big enough to transport in the car with back seats down etc. I'll have to check out that S-Max deal sounds good! I had noticed the charge for ski racks is high, Budget don't seem to have a winter tyre upgrade but offer chains for circa £25 would this satisfy the authorities?

@JohnHSmith, Odd that if it's a legal requirement to still have winter tyres that the rental firms seem to carte blanche stop on the 15th. Perhaps from their point of view on average it’s not worth it and suspect the winter compound tyres ware quicker?

You'll need to Register first of course.

@Bene, It is not a legal requirement to have winter tyres on your vehicle in Germany, it is advisory only. Hence the racket that some of the car hire companies have running.

However IF you have an accident and the assessor feels that the weather conditions were such that winter tyres would have been the better option, then you are considered to be at a minimum partially to blame. It is a popular misconception that they are mandatory in Germany. Even in Switzerland and Austria I believe it is advisory (i.e common sense) as well. Outside of Scandinavia, I think I read somewhere that only Slovenia/Slovakia makes it mandatory, but I may be a wee bit out of date there as I've not checked the regulations recently. I follow the advisory rule - O to O (Oktober bis Ostern = October to Easter), and change back to summer tyres usually at the beginning of May.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

@Bene, There's a million winter tyre rules/laws in Germany & Austria posts and topics on here, @Samerberg Sue, is the best source of the actual current rules. AFAIK the chains won't do as the Austrian laws only allow them to be used on snow covered roads which means you would have to stop and take them off\put them on as you went if conditions were changeable? Winter tyres alone will almost certainly be fine and that S-Max deal highlighted above seems a winner to me?

After all it is free

@Samerberg Sue, all the research I've done on Austria states mandatory not advisory till 15th April. Interested in anything you can find different as a german speaker

This is complicated! At least I have time to sort it out.

@robboj, It would appear that the deal that @Alastair Pink, has kidly highlighted only includes what they call 'Winterization' until the 31st March. I travel on the 11th April.

As @JohnHSmith, has mentioned there are potenital 'pit falls' it seems when arranging such serives through 3rd party brokers rather than directly with the rental firm too.

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

@holidayloverxx, I'm at work at the moment and do not have access to my usual reference materials (ÖAMTC and ADAC web sites). I'll check again to see if there is legislation and how it is worded. I remember being very surprised when I read it was only Slovenia/Slovakia that actually had prescription in the form of dates, etc. I think a lot of the English-speaking motoring agencies err on the side of caution when it comes to advice, hence the belief that it is mandatory between 2 arbitrary dates.

Last year the first bad snows were at the end of September for example and then for most of October the temperatures were well above average. I know this because I went to my garage early when the snow was forecast to get my winter tyres put on due to the risk of coming off the road going up to my village. I then regretted it for the rest of October as it was so bloody warm. Evil or Very Mad

The days the snow was on the roads, I was not using my car as it was a holiday weekend! rolling eyes

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

Bene, you can avoid those pitfalls if you go through a broker whose website tells you which hire company will provide the car and that Winter tyres (for example) are included. Just double check everything and get something in writing and print it to take with you.

snow reports

Hello,

Thinking about doing this drive this coming April and trying to estimate the cost of driving; anyone able to give a rough estimation of how much I need for tolls and fuel (not sure if hire car would be petrol or diesel) and any other costs to consider?

Haven't driven to a ski resort before- just trying to work out if I can DIY cheaper than a package- normally doesn't work out cheaper for two of us but I think to Obergurgl/Soelden it might Very Happy

Anything else I need to know about? I know about the Vignette!

€8.80 for the 10-day toll sticker (vignette), unless you take a scenic route (assuming you fly to Munich rather than Innsbruck).
No other tolls.
Fuel is below €1.30 for a litre of 98 octane or €0.98 for diesel in this bit of Germany right now. Austria is probably cheaper.

You know it makes sense.

Thanks, didn't realise the vignette was for the tolls- thought it was something you needed extra 😊

Fuel cheap too!

Help!!

First time Driving for transfer (Munich-Obergurgl) in April-advice?

snowHeads Forum Index >>> The Piste