Day 4: September 17 Salzburg-Munich drop off

It’s cloudy. We wake up late, pack and have a hearty breakfast. The Bircher Muesli at this hotel is to die for. Tastes as delicious as the ones they serve on British Airways business class, which is my yardstick. Yum. We check out and hit the road.

The drive back is all autobahn, but there’s a huge traffic jam (a “stau”) on the A8 close to Munich. We clear it after half an hour and head up the A99 which circles Munich to the Audi drop off. All in all, it takes us about 2 hours to arrive. We stop at a gas station and get the car washed. Obviously being clueless as to how these things work, we just stand around looking clueless until an attendant shows us how. You drive you car in until the light says stop. Then you get out of your car, go outside and punch in the code. The wash does its thing and you drive it out once the light turns green. Simple when you know what to do. Not so simple otherwise!

We drive to the drop off but just can’t find the place. The name of the agent is Vikase, and the shipper is E.H. Harms. It turns out that you have to drive to the far end of Robert-Bosche Strasse and go up a steep ramp to this place. If you choose not to drive up the ramp, you end up in a gigantic DHL lot. Believe me, we tried every option.

At the drop off, things go smoothly until we do the inspection. It turns out that the roof rack is in a cardboard carton in the trunk. We didn’t install ours and this is a “big problem”. All movable parts are removed as they could damage the car during shipment. I kept insisting that the rack is standard and not an add on. They call up their big boss who said that despite this, these may ship independently to the dealer and so he cannot accept them. He offers us two choices, install it or take it home as luggage. We take up the install it now offer. As we are going through the paperwork, they have some more conversations and agree to ship it with the car instead of installing it. We make sure that the condition report indicates that the rack is in the car. We also remove the first aid kit and safety vests as these are taken out before shipping and leave signs on the seats indicating that we want the IN license plates as mementos. Otherwise they are removed at the port. We are told that the car will be trucked to Bremerhaven and will arrive at the dealer in 5 weeks. The car has 451.4 miles on it and we have driven it for 446 miles in 72h. We say our goodbyes and check into the Kempinski. It’s a 3am wake up call for the journey home tomorrow and we have some coffee to buy.