| 08-26-2016, 11:45 PM | #1 |
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M3Tooner's European Delivery Adventure June 2016
A Little Background
This is my first BMW, first Euro Delivery experience and first time in Europe. I first started considering purchasing a new “fun car” about two years ago when I sold my Subaru. It was a 2000MY Impreza 2.5RS which I bought brand new. There was a large online community much like bimmerpost and that didn’t help very much because my car did not stay stock for very long. Once the turbocharger bug bit, that was it. Three blocks and one transmission later, I practically have a souped up STi under the old GC8 body. However that’s not the end, there was always something else that needed upgrading, so I got tired of it, especially after my priorities changed when I got married and had kids. On the bright side, since I did 90% of the work myself, I learnt a lot. The nuts and bolts came easy for me. The challenging part was learning how to tune/map my engine from the ground up using a standalone Electromotive TEC-II engine control module. In the end I got it running pretty well and it made good power. I also made some good friends along the way that kept in touch even after we sold our cars. How I picked the M3 There weren’t too many cars that were on my shortlist. I’ve done many track days with my Subaru and got really addicted to it. So my criteria is that this new car had to have track ready capabilities out of the box, as I told myself I am done with modifying cars (famous last words  ). The Cayman GTS was a strong runner up. I also considered the ATS-V (briefly) and the Golf R (as a cheaper option in exchange for more track time and track gear). In the end though, the BMW Euro Delivery program was what really tipped the scales, plus with two young kids at home, the M3 won. Coming on here and reading about all of the fantastic ED adventures really sealed the deal for me. Thanks to all of you that have taken the time to post their stories and helpful tips. Plane Tickets We flew with Delta from DTW to MUC non-stop. I was open to 1-stop flights but they were not any cheaper surprisingly. I monitored prices weekly for about 6 months ahead. I used google flights to track the price fluctuations. For my case, the price stayed pretty consistent from 90-30 days out. Anything less than 30 days is a risk depending on which day you purchase. I used my miles to buy one ticket and paid for the other. I found that the miles price fluctuated a lot more than the cash purchase. Hotels I booked all my hotels online about 2-3 weeks out. It worked out well for all except for Hallstatt, Austria. They sell out months in advance. Plus the hotels there have a primitive system for booking. You have to either phone them up or send emails back and forth. I used email and it was a tedious process. So I ended up not getting my preferred hotel (with private parking). Luckily due to a cancelation from another customer, I still managed to secure a decent hotel. Down side was we had to park in the next town down the road, Lahn, and take the shuttle. No cars allowed in Hallstatt. Things that Worked and Things that Didn’t • Having GPS coordinates ready before hand for each destination worked really well when using the car’s Nav! It made entering the destinations much simpler and reduced the risk of typing mistakes in an unfamiliar language. You can get the Latitude / Longitude coordinates of any location quite easily online. • Google navigation for U-Bahn worked! We couldn’t figure out all the maps of which line to use and where all the stops were. Google navigation on my phone was extremely detailed on directions. Make sure you get a suitable data plan for your phone if possible, you won’t regret it. • Rain coats worked! It rains a lot in June. We brought rain coats with hoodies which I like a lot better than carrying umbrellas. Also, we ended up driving in the rain a lot. Wished I had some Rain-X to treat the windshield. Keep that in mind if you are travelling during the rainy season. • Estimated drive time between destinations didn’t work. I don’t know if it is a summer thing only or what, but almost every route we took, we encountered numerous traffic jams due to construction, accidents, and or road closures. I would recommend adding 1-2 hours extra buffer for your driving time estimates. I had to cut out our planned destinations a couple times due to traffic delays. • I struggled a little on road signs as I did not study what some of the signs mean. It was a problem mostly when I was trying to drive fast on the Autobahn. The speed limits changes so much in some sections that sometimes I couldn’t be sure if the speed went back to unlimited again. On smaller side roads, I just followed the flow of traffic and it wasn’t a big deal. No speeding tickets yet! Fingers crossed. Trip Overview Day 1 – BMW Welt factory tour, museum and vehicle delivery. Day 2 – Munich sightseeing Day 3-4 – Graz, Austria Day 5 – Hallstatt, Austria (driving via Grossglockner High Alpine road) Day 6-7 – Salzburg, Austria Day 8 – Neuschwanstein Castle. Schwangau, Germany Day 9-10 – Nurburgring and Cochem, Germany Day 11 – Munich Day 12 – Car drop-off and flight home On to the Pictures Day 1 Our flight arrived on-time at 8:30am. We cleared customs and were out of the airport in about 15 minutes. It helped that we only had carry-on luggage, but overall the airport was very efficient. Our Sixt driver was waiting outside.   I told the driver that we wanted to get to the hotel to see if we can check-in early. If not, we would like to be dropped off at the Welt instead. While on the road, he called the hotel and confirmed that the room was not ready. He offered to bring us to the hotel anyway just so we can drop our luggage off and then brought us to the Welt. We stayed at the Leonardo Royal Hotel.    We arrived at the Welt around 10am and headed straight to the delivery lounge to check-in. We had booked the Factory Tour for 11:45am. There is only one English speaking tour each day, and it’s at 11:45am. We had booked this a few weeks ahead of time via email to the Welt. The check-in process took about 15 minutes, so we had about an hour to eat and relax in the premium lounge.      From the premium lounge, we saw other customers taking delivery of their cars.       Then we headed to the Factory Tour. The meet up point is behind the gift shop. The whole tour took close to 2 hours and it was a walking tour. I think it was 2km’s of walking. For me it was really just to kill the time until our 2:30pm delivery. I have visited a few automotive factories before in person and they all look the same. My wife was not that excited that we had to walk 2km’s and look at stuff that really did not interest her, especially after a long flight. So in hindsight, we should have just skipped the tour and looked for a place to nap instead. By the way, no pictures allowed during the factory tour. After the tour, we headed over to the Museum across the street.  There was a photoshoot going on with this freakishly tall female model.   The Museum was nice but we were tired, so we walked through quickly, took some pictures and headed back to the Welt.                    On our way back to the Welt, we saw the photoshoot was still going on. She’s in a different outfit now.   When we got back to the premium lounge, we saw our car already staged. Since we had a few minutes to spare before delivery time, we had more free snacks and drinks while overlooking our new car!   Then the time came to meet up with our delivery specialist (Tilman Schillings) and walk down the stairs. We stopped midway on the stairways and he rotated the car one round for us.    On our way to the car, we saw this white M4 GTS staged as well.  Before the introduction to the car, he took a picture for us using my camera. They are no longer providing free Welt photographers and free photo print outs.      There was only one mile on the odometer and a full tank of gas. Nice!    Time for the Victory lap! I did two laps and then headed outside for some photos in front of the tornado.       After the photos, I wanted to make sure the car drove OK and there were no issues. So we went driving around the Welt general area for a few minutes to shake down the car and then headed straight into the underground parking of the Welt. I was given a free one-time parking voucher during the check-in process. Then later I also requested for a second one from our delivery specialist because I was planning to park at the welt for 2 days. The Welt had a nicer and more secured parking than what was available at our hotel and was free. Our hotel wanted $17 euros per day. We took the U-Bahn to the hotel. It was only one station away, fast and easy. Then we had an early dinner at the hotel restaurant and went straight to bed. Day 2 We had a light agenda today because we wanted to take it easy and sleep in. Got out of the hotel around 11am and headed to the premium lounge for a free lunch. The wife was a little embarrassed but I have read here that some were going back for up to five days without problems! LOL! Anyway, the person at the VIP front desk did stop and asked us if we were taking delivery today. We said we did it yesterday and she let us pass on to the premium lounge.   Next we went to the U-Bahn station and purchased a 1-day family pass. I think it was something like $15 euros. That allowed us unlimited use of the U-Bahn for the day, not bad. First stop was the Marienplatz.          In this next photo, you can see the Olympia Park Tower and the BMW Headquarters building in the horizon out there.    After Marienplatz, we went back to the BMW Welt area where the Olympia Park was. We wanted to check out the view from the top of the Olympic tower. It was $7 euro per ticket.        After that, it was time for dinner, so we took the U-Bahn back downtown to Augustiner Keller. The food was pretty good here. However we had a hack of a time trying to find someone to get us a table. The place was packed when we got there and the wait staff was too busy to help us. When we did manage to flag one person down, they just pointed us in a certain direction, not specifying which table to sit at. Every table was taken; I guess we were just supposed to share tables with other people. After finally getting seated, it was another long wait till someone came to take out orders. I couldn’t read the menu as it was all in German, so I googled a picture of the dish I wanted and showed it to the server, it worked. Everyone there seems to be having a great time, so maybe this kind of service is the norm here in Germany? Definitely not what I am used to in the States.  Day 3 We slept in again today to help fight the jet lag. Checked out of the hotel at 11am and when to the Welt to pick up the car. For a late breakfast, we found this food stand right outside the Welt that had fresh made crapes there were pretty good. I guess we could have gotten more free food from the premium lounge but my skin wasn’t thick enough. Our plan was to drive to Graz, Austria today. It was a 4.5 hour drive (243 miles) according to google maps. It ended taking over 5.5 hours due to road construction and heavy rain. We stopped by a gas station right before the Austrian border to purchase a Vignette. A good friend of mine from the US moved to Graz a few years ago for work. So we wanted to visit him for a couple days. Special VIP gated parking at his office.  First destination we went to was the Schlossberg Fortress of Graz, right in the middle of the city.             Dinner at the Glöckl Bräu. Best schnitzel in town, Austrian style. It was really good.     Day 4 The first part of today was the heart breaking part of the trip for me. My friend is a big car guy back in the States, but in Austria, he did not own a car. Just used public transportation and biking mostly. He wanted to bring us to this nearby mountain that he frequented mountain biking. The problem was that he had never driven there by car. The bike route that he normally takes was completely different than the car route. So we started driving up this mountain road that became narrower and narrower and soon the pavement ended and it was dirt road the rest of the way. He immediately knew that I would not want to drive my brand new car off road into the unknown. So we stopped and started backing down slowly. It was challenging enough drive forwards up this narrow road, now I had to reverse down! It was taking way too long, so when we reached a small clearing in front of someone’s house with a very short driveway, I attempted to make a 3-point turn. We went back and forth a few times but couldn’t get the car turned around, kinda like Austin Powers. My friend hopped out to check the back end for clearance. When that was clear, I started to inch forward and that was when I heard a loud crack, it was the right corner of my front bumper that caught the side of the hill and ripped apart. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, we just made some bad decisions to keep going up this mountain even when it started to narrow down. Hindsight, we should’ve turned back much earlier when the road was wider. Lesson learnt.   So even though I was a little upset, there was nothing much I could do about it. So we decided to go to another mountain that was more well-known where we could park at the base and take a cable car up to the peak. It was the Schöckl Mountain of Graz.            A little more sightseeing of downtown Graz.        We had drinks and dinner at Landhaus Keller. It was excellent and I highly recommend it even though it was a little pricey.    |
| 08-26-2016, 11:46 PM | #2 |
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Day 5
The final destination today is Hallstatt, Austria. There were several routes to get there but I chose to take a slightly longer route to include driving the Grossglockner High Alpine road. It’s 190 miles to Grossglockner and another 85 miles to Hallstatt. The estimated drive time is 3hr 30m and 2hr 15m respectively for each leg. Wasser-Wunder-Weg Jungfernsprung waterfall on the way to Grossglockner High Alpine road.    Grossglockner Toll – $35 euro per car.   At the top. Had lunch in the souvenir store/restaurant.   Experience 48 kilometers of panoramic road with 36 hairpin bends, ascending to 2,504 meters.      The Pasterze glacier.               Arrived at Hallstatt just in time for a sunset dinner by Lake Hallstatt. FYI, there are no cars allowed here, only for residence. They have several designated paid parking areas in the next town south. If you booked a hotel in Hallstatt, you can call for the shuttle using a landline phone provided in the parking lot office area. When you get the parking ticket, chose the Hotel option instead of the Day parking option. It comes out cheaper.    We stayed in Hotel Gasthof Simony B&B. Not my first choice due to having to park out of town, but it turned out ok since it was right in the middle of town square and right on the lake.       After dinner we walked over to the famous picture taking spot. The available day light was going away fast. So I managed to get a couple shots with daylight and nigh scene within about half hour of shooting.   This was taken when it was almost pitch black; camera was set to 30 second exposure.  Day 6 The final destination today was Salzburg, Austria but since it was only 45 miles away and the estimated drive time was 1hr 10m, we decided to spend most of the day exploring more of Hallstatt and go up to the World Heritage Skywalk.        This is the deck on the lake of our hotel. Nice view for breakfast.  Cable car up to the World Heritage Skywalk            We finished all the planned sightseeing a lot quicker than expected. With extra time in hand, we squeezed in an extra destination. Dachstein Ice Caves. It was only a short 10-15 minute drive south of Hallstatt.    Be warned, the cable car only brings you halfway there. There was another 30 minutes of uphill hiking to get to the entrance! We found out we were extremely out of shape by the time we got up.  This is the entrance to the ice caves. It does not look like it but the rock she is sitting on is ice cold, it helped cool us down after the rather intense hike up.    Into the cave now. Next warning if you decide to visit, bring a jacket. Even though it is 70F out, inside the caves got down to freezing temps. I only had my short sleeve button shirt but being from Michigan, I tried to act tough.          Here is the exit of the cave. See how high we are? We actually came out at a higher elevation then where we entered the caves. So now we had to hike all the way down again! In the rain this time no less.... That’s lake Hallstatt down there.  Filled her up and started our drive to Salzburg.  Day 7 We stayed at the Motel One Salzburg – Mirabell. It’s a pretty new building and everything was nice and clean with a modern design theme. The weather forecast called for rain all day and it did rain all day. I had planned to do the Sound of Music tour and walk around town but instead we took the opportunity to sleep in till noon and visited the Red Bull museum Hangar 7 in the afternoon. It’s a private collection of all kinds of cool machines. Entrance was free.                  What an awesome place to sit and have a cup of coffee. Amazing!      Day 8 Today was supposed to be an easy driving day to Neuschwanstein Castle and stop by Linderhof Palace as a mid-way excursion point. Estimated drive time of 3 hours total to cover 140 miles. Since we missed the Sound of Music Tour yesterday, we decided to do it in the morning and skip Linderhof Palace.          This is the church where Maria and the captain got married.     Mirabell Gardens       On the way to Neuschwanstein Castle, we encountered a road closure. The signs were not very clear on where to detour. We had to pull over in the small town that had a tourist info center. Since it was the weekend, no one was working there and the whole place was like a ghost town. We walked around lost for a few minutes and finally found this map posted on the door.  When we got to Neuschwanstein Castle, it was already late. So we checked in the hotel (Hotel Garni Schlossblick) and went looking for dinner. There were only two restaurants open. After dinner, we talked about the plan for tomorrow. I wanted to get up to the Marienbrucke look out bridge to get a picture of the castle but we found out the bridge was closed for some work. Furthermore it was going to rain all day again tomorrow. The whole atmosphere of this place just wasn’t what we expected. It felt more like a theme park which was somewhat of a disappointment. The lady at the hotel front desk warned us that if we wanted to visit the castles tomorrow, one of us had better wake up at the crack of dawn and walk over to the ticket office to purchase tickets before the buses and buses load of tourist started arriving. The line could easily be 2-3 hours long otherwise. So we made up our minds that all we needed was a few good pictures of the car with the castle background and we would carry on to the next destination.   |
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| 08-26-2016, 11:47 PM | #3 |
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Day 9
On to the Nurburgring! This would be the longest leg of the trip. The estimated drive time was 5 hours to cover roughly 333 miles. I thought for sure when I got on the Autobahn that I could open it up and make up some time…. Well not exactly. There was so much construction slowing down traffic that my high speed runs were a wash. It was like driving behind the pace car after opening up a huge gap. Finally got there, first thing we saw was the M Test Center.    Then a short drive over to the Nurburgring Info Center.   This is the required photo for anyone visiting the Nurburgring.  M Ring Taxi booth  RSR Nurburg. You can rent all kinds of race prep cars from these guys to drive on the ring.  View from our hotel room. Hotel Am Tiergarten Nürburg.  Hotel Restaurant Pistenklause  Hotel owner's cat   Dinner at Restaurant Pistenklause. Food here was decent and at a fair price.      Day 10 It forecast was calling for rain all day again….. Nevertheless, we went to the Nordschleife to check out the conditions. There were many people there waiting to get on the track. They closed it for half an hour to clear an accident. I bought a 1 lap ticket and went for it. Wife rode with me. She was really afraid I would crash because of all the youtube videos I’ve shown her. LOL! Since it was raining, and it was my first time there, I kept DSC ON just to be safe. Even then the car oversteered enough to keep things interesting. Filling up before entering the ring.        Uh-oh.... some poor dude crashed.     These next three photos I bought from the pro photographers around the ring. Turned out really good. I love them!     Back at the parking lot.    Young admirer of my car.  After the ring lap, we headed over to the city of Cochem for some lunch and sightseeing. It was about 40 minutes away, 28 miles.               Back to the hotel area for dinner at another restaurant. This little town is so motorsport oriented it's unbelievable. Nice cars EVERYWHERE!       Day 11 Today our plan was to drive back to Munich and stop by the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart as a halfway point for lunch. Traffic was going fine until we got within a few miles north of Stuttgart. All of a sudden the Autobahn became a parking lot. We found out later that there was an accident serious enough that they had to shut down the freeway. We wasted over two hours stuck in traffic. I just shut off the car and sat there. People were out walking around wondering what was going on. This delay caused us to forego the stop at the Porsche Museum. We stopped at a McDonalds for a quick bite and kept on driving towards Munich. After checking into Hotel MOXY Munich near the airport, we went exploring around the airport to get familiarized with where the Log In Out drop off point was and where the terminal was. I wanted to be sure because we had an early flight tomorrow, 10:15am. The Log In Out office opens at 8am and if it took 30 minutes to finish the process, we would be very tight for time to catch the flight. We made it no problems. So in case anyone is wondering how much time you need between drop off and catching your flight, you can use me as a benchmark. Washing the car at the Agip gas station just outside the airport.   And this would be the last time I would see her until redelivery. Total distance travelled = 1590 miles.    We dropped her off on June 14th, it is August 27th today, coming up on 11 weeks, and I am still waiting for it due to the damn Delivery Stop Rear Differential replacement campaign.  BMW quotes a 6-8 week re-delivery time for vehicles coming from east coast port of entry. My car was actually shipped very quickly over. It only took 3 weeks to arrive at Newark port, on July 6th. Since then it’s just been held up by the Delivery Stop Campaign. That’s the end of the trip folks. Hope this write up will help someone's future ED trip planning. Thanks for reading. |
| 08-27-2016, 10:01 PM | #6 |
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That is a lot of firsts! Congratulations!
We took delivery the same day - that was me and my family taking delivery of our MG M3 in your thread. And I think I caught your car outside the Welt in my ED delivery journal - around picture #25...http://f80.bimmerpost.com/forums/sho....php?t=1291837 Small world. Anyway, now that the Delivery Stop has been lifted I hope you get your car soon. VPC should have had plenty of time to fix the damage and make it look perfect. I admire your attitude about that, by the way - I think I would have been apoplectic.
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| 08-28-2016, 08:59 AM | #7 | |
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Yup, that was me outside the Welt right after delivery.  Regarding the damage, I was actually quite upset about it for a couple days but kept it hidden. Don't need to ruin the experience for my wife and friend. It helped that I knew in the back of my mind that the ED insurance will take care of it. |
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| 08-29-2016, 01:59 PM | #10 | ||
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Good news. I just found out my car was dropped off at the dealership today!  It's waiting for a detail job now and I can hopefully pick it up tomorrow. |
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| 08-31-2016, 10:00 AM | #13 | ||
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| 08-31-2016, 11:34 AM | #14 | |
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But yea, there is no service so to speak. You pretty much seat yourself, share a table (no one minds), and flag them down for beer (thats the hard part).. Don't let hthem give you the tourist size beers either :P But I think its best to think of them not as a traditional american restaurant..More of a garden where you sit and enjoy some food/drink when you manage to get it. I thought they had english menus tho ? Pretty sure they did. Maybe they were being used at the moment. Anyway, great trip !!
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| 08-31-2016, 11:45 AM | #15 |
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I really enjoyed that post. What a great trip! Thank you for posting up all those amazing pics and like everyone else has mentioned, congrats!
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| 08-31-2016, 01:22 PM | #16 |
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Great write up, looks like you enjoyed yourselves. We have a short time in Salzburg too, if you could just visit one spot from the sound of music tour, which would it be?
How was driving the ring during break in? Did you feel constrained? I dont have it on our itinerary this time but maybe the next ED. Btw - damage looks minor and seems like you took it well. What can you do when the damage is already done right?Good luck with the re-delivery and congrats. |
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| 09-01-2016, 12:40 PM | #19 | |||||
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Regarding Nurburgring, unless you are really familiar with the place and want to go 10/10th, I don't see any issue staying within the break-in guidelines. This car has plenty of power/torque below 5500rpm, enough power to get around with reasonable pace. I was taking it much easier though because it was raining. I guess my bumper damage was not that minor since they did replace the entire fascia. It looks brand new now, no rock chips or bug guts etching. It's like I hit the reset button! Thank goodness for the excellent ED insurance. Have a good trip! Quote:
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In case anyone was wondering, I took re-delivery on Monday this week, one day short of 11 weeks after drop off. Car looks and drives great but rear diff not replaced yet. |
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| 09-02-2016, 01:21 PM | #20 |
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Great writeup, thanks for posting. Looks like you guys really pulled out all the stops and had an amazing trip!
Agree about Neuschwanstein. Just nice for the classic picture of the car with the castle, but other than that no need to stick around.
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| 09-06-2016, 12:46 PM | #21 | |
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