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<\/p>\nAll told, we drove about 4000 Km in three weeks, in Germany, Switzerland (just for a couple of hours), Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The latter three countries require a “vignette”, or special sticker, for vehicles that wish to use the highways.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Here they are; Czech, Hungarian and Austrian stickers (from the left). They’re available for different periods from a few days to a year; the short-term ones we bought cost between 6 and 9 Euros each. Fines are supposed to be stiff, and they’re available at every border location, and most gas stations near the borders, so there’s no excuse not to have one.<\/p>\n
Fuel prices were a surprise. In Germany we found prices ranging from 1.02 to 1.08 Euros\/liter (around US$4\/gallon at the current exchange rates)! Here in Brazil I’m paying around R$1.90\/liter, which works out to about US$2.30 per gallon. In contrast, Austrian gasoline was a little less expensive at 0.85 Euros\/liter (US$3.35\/gallon); as we drove quite a bit in Austria and along the Austrian border, I made sure to never leave Austria with less than a full tank. Czech gasoline was slightly less expensive than in Austria; I didn’t need to fill up in Hungary, but seem to remember prices as being around the Austrian level.<\/p>\n
Anyway, the fuel was of much higher quality than we get here – Brazilian gasoline has 10 to 20% of ethanol mixed in to keep the price down, but you get worse mileage. Both cars we drove averaged about 6.5 liters\/100 Km – this works out to 15.4 Km\/liter or 34.8 miles\/gallon, so fuel costs were lower than I had expected. Nevertheless, it usually pays to ask the rental company for a diesel car; they get even better mileage, and diesel costs less than gasoline in most countries (Germany is an exception here). Not all brands offer diesel models, though.<\/p>\n
To drive into Eastern Europe, you’ll need some extra equipment not usually necessary in Germany: a red warning triangle and a first-aid kit. Some countries also require a fire extinguisher and a set of replacement bulbs. So if you rent a car in Germany, be sure to ask for those items.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
All told, we drove about 4000 Km in three weeks, in Germany, Switzerland (just for a couple of hours), Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The latter three countries require a “vignette”, or special sticker, for vehicles that wish to use the highways. Here they are; Czech, Hungarian and Austrian stickers (from the left). They’re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photo","category-travel"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Rainer Brockerhoff","author_link":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/author\/rbrockerhoff\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1q3Zc-zB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}