Sooner or later after you move to your new home you’re going to want to get away for the weekend or maybe you’re going to want to drive to Ikea to pick up some furniture – either way, you might need to rent a car.
If you’re like me, the first place you go when renting a car is one of the trusty sites in English you are already familiar with – Kayak, Expedia or even Hertz.com or Avis.com directly. When we first moved to Lörrach that’s exactly what we did. From the States we booked a car using AutoEurope.com to be picked up at the EuroAirport (Basel/Mulhouse) when we arrived for our first weekend. With insurance a midsize car (Fiat Croma) came to be about US$450 for the weekend – yikes!
One week later for our trip to Beaune we needed to rent a car again (I’ve been trying to buy a car but with all the paperwork it takes some time). Not wanting to pay the previous weekend’s amount, I did a bit more research and hence the point of this posting. Instead of using Hertz.com or Avis.com, once you are in country try using the local country websites such as Hertz.de, Avis.de or Sixt.de. These websites often offer special weekend rates and seem to be cheaper most of the rest of the time as well.
Take for example some of the deals we found for our trip to Beaune – a VW Passat from Friday through Sunday night through our local Sixt (not airport) with unlimited km and all insurance for 100 Euros (USD ~145). Also through Sixt a BMW 525 for 140 Euros. At Avis the deals were similar. Why pay US tourist prices? Just for the ease of transacting in English?
So that you can feel prepared linguistically when you rent a car locally the next time, here are a few words you need to know:
- Mietwagon – rental car
- PKW – stands for Personenkraftwagon – passenger car
- LKW - stands for Lastkraftwagon – truck
- Abholung – where you are picking the car up
- Rückgabe – where you are returning the car
- Mietanfang – beginning of rental
- Mietende – end of rental
- Unbegrenzte Kilometer - unlimited kilometers
- Haftpflichtversicherung – liability insurance
- Vollkaskoversicherung – comprehensive coverage
- Diebstahlversicherung - theft insurance
Only one other word of advice – don’t make the same mistake we made and check what time the local rental office closes. Unlike the rental desks at the airport the office for the locals is well, on locals time.
Have you found a great deal on local car rentals? Please let us know.
