Re: Eat her dust Germany and Finland !



"vello" <vellokala@xxxxxx> wrote in message news:1ead495d-8b07-42fa-8e07-a43db6679fa5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Aug 29, 4:43 am, Vidas <darsiau...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 28, 5:54 pm, vello <vellok...@xxxxxx> wrote:

> On Aug 28, 3:55 am, Vidas <darsiau...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > On Aug 26, 11:59 pm, hol...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Eugene Holman) wrote:

> > To be honest, Helsinki is on my list of places to visit. Renting a > > car
> > and driving south along the Baltic coast is a trip I will take one of
> > these days.

> For such a trip it is wiser to take a car from Tallinn - you will save
> two car tickets on ferry, a lot of time and most probably you got your
> car a bit cheaper.

That is my intention Vello. Fly into Helsinki. Raise hell. Flee south
to Tallinn via ferry then rent a car that isnt especially theft worthy
in preparation for crossing the frontier into Latvia.

Anderson's experience have made us cautious here, but in reality car
theft is not too common crime in Baltics - same risk as in any other
place. You can happily take a car you want with no fear :-) -maybe
some common sense is needed - lock your car if you leave it and think
a bit about where you leave it.

Better still: don't drive an oldish Audi with no kind of alarm system. Both the cars that I lost in the Baltics were of course properly locked and both were parked in official parking areas. In both cases we were gone only for 5 to 7 minutes. I'm quite sure that the thieves had been following us for quite a while, knowing that they had the right sort of equipment to open and start an Audi. But car thefts have decreased considerably since those days.

After the last theft I decided not to own a car anymore. Renting cars is actually cheaper and much more fun. And yes, for a Baltic trip you should definitely rent one in Tallinn, not in Helsinki. Ten days ago I had booked a Toyota Auris through Avis at Tallinn Airport. "Unfortunately" they had run out of cars in that category, so they had to give me a 2-litre Mercedes instead. I had it for three days and it cost me 180 euros with unlimited mileage (we drove about 800km). That may sound like a lot in American ears, but it was the cheapest price available at the airport. There are smaller, non-international rental services with much lower prices however.

One-way rentals in the Baltics are offered by the major international chains, but a *round* trip in the Baltics I would begin and end in Lithuania, where rental prices are lowest. I used to rent cars through Litinterp in Vilnius, but their partner has now become part of the Sixt chain and raised the prices correspondingly.


.

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