I hope you enjoy reading about our experience buying a van in Germany! Check back often as I will update this page as we make new improvements to our camper van!

Van Shopping in Germany

Before we arrived in Germany, we had been researching different vans. We were looking at so many sites and gawking over awesome van conversions. We had it in our minds we were going to end up with a Mercedes Sprinter or a Volkswagen high top van of sorts considering we were going to be shopping in Germany. We went into it without our hearts set on anything, though, knowing it was not going to be an easy task – mainly because our German is extremely limited! Ich spreche nicht gut Deutsch!

Before we even left for Germany, we spent a lot of time looking on www.mobile.de at different vans and prices. This was giving us a good idea of what we might be paying, and we were pleasantly surprised to find how many were within and under our budget. Our max was set at about 10,000 Euros, which was about what we sold our 5th wheel and Dustin’s car for in San Diego. That price would dip a bit into savings, but for the right van house, it would be worth it.

We landed in Stuttgart the morning of July 6th. Before we even left the airport, we decided to use some free internet and get serious about where we were going to find our new home. We had a rental car lined up but we didn’t want to just start driving around looking for used car dealerships! The website we were using is helpful because there is a filter to show vans for sale through dealerships. We weren’t going to try to buy from a private party mainly because we needed someone who could speak English and help us with the registration process. After about an hour, we had a few addresses for dealerships selling multiple vans within our price range.

At the second dealership, the first van we saw, we fell in love with. It was a 2011 black Ford Transit with low miles for 8,500 Euros. The young man working didn’t speak English, so funny enough, we were all on our phones on Google Translate asking and answering questions about the van. After about an hour, his cousin came to help answer any questions. The sale couldn’t be made that first day because the registration offices were already closing. We found a campground nearby to set up camp. Once we were settled, I received a text message from the man we were working with at the dealer to inform me that the van had actually sold the day before. So we were back to searching.

The campground had wifi (yay) so we were back on mobile.de looking for dealerships with vans nearby. The next day (Thursday) we drove to a dealership that had tons of vans listed. We arrived at the lot and the vans they had on display were…ok-ish. Some were old, some were high miles, some were rusty, all were around 5,000 Euros. We spent probably an hour trying to talk ourselves into thinking one of them would probably work, and the prices were so much lower. Thankfully, we decided no to all of them and walked toward the building. We saw they had some vans inside, 2 of which were the ones I had taken screen shots of from the website. These ones were significantly better, but there was still random things wrong or fixed (poorly) so we weren’t confident about these either. I pulled up a screen shot of a van listed at the address of the dealer and asked an employee if the van was still available. He pointed us in the direction out and around the building.

We entered a Van Mecca! At least 40 hightop vans – Mercedes, Volkswagens, Renaults, Opels, and a Ford! We toured a handful of them, all of them were huge and right at our max price, except for one. The Ford was significantly cheaper, newer, less miles, and the size was perfect for us. We can both stand in it, and we can fit sleeping sideways! We were sold. Victor was the young man working the lot, and lucky for us, he spoke English. We test drove it and were in love. We found our new home!

The only minor problem was, the registration offices were closed already on this day. He asked us to come back Friday Morning to complete the sale. We’d have to wait another day – not bad considering we had been in Germany for less than 48 hours!

---

Buying Our Van

We arrived back at the dealership at 9:00 Friday morning. Victor arrived and we started the process. One thing we were told was we could only temporarily register the vehicle because we have American Passports. This is something I am still looking into, and can’t really find any specific answers to. Now, across Germany, I guess you can only temporarily register a vehicle for 1 month at a time. We learned in this particular state in Germany, we could temporarily register the car for up to 3 months at a time, so that seemed like an extra bonus.

3 months would have been great, but there was one other problem. The car was due for a 2 year service check – TUV – at the end of August. So, we could only register the van until August 31. Here’s where we were so thankful, once again, to have been at a great place with awesome service. Victor, our salesman, drove us to the German DMV in Rottweil, waited in line, and took care of all the paperwork for us. He sent us to the coffee shop to wait! An hour later, we had temporary plates and were driving back to the dealership.

Our experience with this first part was incredibly simple, mainly because of Victor. If anyone reading this is wanting to leave the U.S., fly to Germany and buy a van to live in, I highly recommend flying into Stuttgart, taking a train to Oberndorf, and walking 15 minutes to this dealership. Ask for Victor!

Jungkind Fahrzeughandel
Neckstarstr. 59 78727 Oberndorf
+49 (0)7423 8638600

We can’t say enough great things about Victor. He was so honest. The van listing price online as 6,900 Euros, and he dropped it down to 6,200 Euros. For all the registration and insurance it was an additional 300 Euros. He told us the car was previously owned by a private party so there wasn’t any tax added on to our price. How could we have known that? He could have just automatically said there was additional 19% tax on the price and kept that for himself.

Since we need to have our TUV done and get registered longer, we will be coming back here. They are a TUV station, and we’re hoping Victor will help us again with extending our registration. I’ll write more after we take care of that and discover if we can actually register our van with an American Passport.

---

Buying Supplies

Saturday, July 9,2016

The first thing we needed to do was buy supplies. We ended up at our friend’s house in Böblingen, southwest of Stuttgart. He also has a van so he was able to direct us to the right stores. Germany’s Home Depot equivalent is OBI. We have spent a lot of time there. Imagine going to Home Depot (as an English speaker) to buy materials for a big project and think about what a time-warp that can be. It took a long time to get out of OBI with what was needed. I stayed behind at Ben’s house while Dustin went on this adventure. I messaged him after 5 hours asking him if he was building the bed in the parking lot of the store! (He wasn’t) OBI is huge, and we’ve probably spent at least 10-15 hours in the store since we’ve been here.

Insulating the Ceiling

Because we wanted to get on the road to Norway as soon as possible, we did a quick insulation of the ceiling using a foam and tape. The ceiling was a “quick and dirty” but good-enough for now job. We are planning to do some more serious insulation before winter comes if we end up somewhere cool. We also needed this part done ASAP so we could move on to building our bed/storage area so we could somewhat move in. I’ve known quite a few people who do these van conversions with their van parked at their house. It’s a whole different ballgame when you have everything you own and a dog and you’re sleeping in a tent while you build!

Building a Bed

Dustin has been a carpenter in the past, and he really enjoys the building part. He’s good at it, too! He is the mastermind behind the rhyme and reasons. He bought lightweight metal to build the frame with, then wood to go across the top and finish off sides. We needed our bed built up higher so that we could fit all our parachutes, gear, clothing, and treasures underneath. As the it got later and later, we decided to find a grocery store parking lot to work in so we weren’t making so much noise in the neighborhood where we were parked. The bed picture is so dark because it was taken late at night! The bed frame was finished, but we obviously didn’t have a mattress yet so we went to bed at our friend Ben’s house that night with plans to get back to OBI and IKEA the next day to get more supplies and a mattress. The next day we woke up bright and early, headed to OBI, to find everything is closed on Sundays! It’s confusing (especially as Americans) at first to think about major retail stores – actually basically everything including grocery stores – being closed on Sundays. I actually LOVE it. Sundays are still special family time days – no working, no shopping, no stress.  It’s basically required leisure time! Since we were halted in our van remodel, we decided to spend our Sunday taking a leisurely drive to Berlin to visit our other friend and sleep at the drop zone he was working at. We camped out that night ready to work more the next day.

Storage and Shelving

We don’t have a lot of stuff, really. I think we did a pretty good job at downsizing when we ended up having a total of 8 bags under 50 pounds with the exception of 1. Our treasures are mostly toys. We have skydiving rigs, BASE rigs, speedwings, ski boots, and many helmets. We also have a small (but practical) collection of tools now, food items, and other miscellaneous things that need places. We decided to have the back half of the bed be storage accessible from the outside back doors, and the front half of the bed be accessible from the inside of the van. I’m also a huge fan of hanging things, especially jackets and sweaters. All of my clothes are on hangers, while Dustin prefers the shelf route for his pants and shirts. We hung a hanging rod across the back. Our clothes would also serve a second purpose of blocking our back windows while we sleep. They are parted and clamped while we drive.

On Monday, July 11, we ended up parked in the OBI parking lot all day while the bed was finished and while Dustin built shelves for our “kitchen” area. This was fun for me because I felt like I had a job to do! I’m not the carpenter in the family, and I’m learning how to do these things, but most of the building is a one person job. I am a pretty good metal cutter, though! Anyway, I was able to go into OBI on missions to find drill bits, screws, or anything else needed that came up. I probably went into the store a dozen times that day. Our kitchen storage consists shelves with large baskets to hold everything in place. We’re lucky in that our van has a giant built in storage above our heads where we sit while driving. It’s accessible through the inside of the van, and that’s where we are currently storing canned goods, random camping supplies, and other random things.

 

 

 

Finalizing Our Paperwork German DMV – Zulassungsstelle or KFZ

It was too easy the first time.
We learned a few things about our van. One thing we learned, was we were driving around with export plates, which is why they had a big expiration date printed on them in red! The export plates come with their own insurance, which is why we didn’t have to deal with that with Victor. We learned that we probably ended up with export plates because of the fact you can’t register a car in Germany without a German address and proof that you live there with an Anmeldung form. I’ll talk more about that later. Anyway, August 31 was rapidly approaching and we wanted to leave ourselves time to make sure we could get our plates situated so we could go enjoy Italy before having to leave the Schengen. Here is our experience when we went back to Germany before our 2 month license plates were up to fully register our van.

TÜV – Thursday, August 18th

We were coming back from spending time with friends in Chamonix and Les Deux Alps. We decided to stop at the first biggish town in Germany to take care of our van stuff. Freiburg was the winner. The first thing we needed to do was our TÜV. That was easy. A quick Google search showed us the local TÜV certified shops. We picked one, drove there, paid 90 Euros, and the inspector spent about 10 minutes checking our our van. We had 2 secondary headlights out and our front tires were pretty worn, but he passed us with a note on the TÜV to get those fixed. We stopped by another shop because we just so happened to have extra tires (when we bought the van, it came with 4 extra tires we had been carrying around with us – it turned out they were all kind of messed up in their own way) so we had the shop replace our secondary headlights and move our tires around. Check.

ADAC Insurance Trip 1 – Thursday, August 18th

The next thing we needed before we headed to the DMV was car insurance. Our friend Google let us know ADAC is the German equivalent to AAA. We found the ADAC office signed up for the membership and went over the options with the agent. This was going to be expensive. In Germany, your insurance goes down every year as you become a more experienced driver. Beginner drivers pay a ton of money. Since we have to renew our drivers licenses every couple of years in the U.S. our licenses don’t show proof of how many years one has been driving. Dustin has been driving for 23 years, but he renewed his license last year so it looks like he’s been driving for 1 year. With that experience, we were looking at paying 1800 Euro for the year for liability only. OK, so $150 a month isn’t terrible, but we were paying about $115 a month for my full coverage car and his pathfinder in San Diego. So it is a bit painful when you look at it like that. We walked away with the special paper showing we had insurance.

KFZ Trip 2 – Friday, August 19th

I’m calling this our second trip to the DMV because the first was technically when we bought the car with Victor. We gathered all our important papers, found a parking spot and headed in. We took our number and sat down. Surprisingly, with the number of people who were in there, we were called within about 45 minutes. There was a young man and a young woman at the desk we were called to, so our guess was one of them was in training. in my best German I said, “We would like to register our car and we don’t speak German well. Do you speak English?” They did and asked to see our paperwork. Dustin laid out the title, the TÜV and the insurance. They started to look through it, then gave us a piece of paper to write our bank account number down – our German bank account number – which we don’t have. We asked why we needed one for this, and they said to pay taxes on the vehicle. German DMVs do not process payments and do not take cash. Well, I already knew we couldn’t open a bank account because we didn’t have proof of residence (Anmeldung, still talk about that later)! They gave us a piece of paper with an address and said we could go there and pay our taxes. The top of the paper translation said it was for a tax collector’s office. We were feeling a bit defeated and bummed because we knew we wouldn’t make it back to the DMV before closing time (this location closed at 12). However, we were in luck that this particular location was open on Saturdays from 9-11 so we were hopeful we could take care of it and be done. We asked if everything else looked good for registration, and they said yes so we went on our way. Italy would have to wait.

Tax Collector’s Office – Friday, August 19th

Thanks to Google Maps and the talking lady in Dustin’s phone, we arrived at the Freiburg tax collector’s office without any problems. We found the office and waited, then a man invited us in. We told him we needed to pay our vehicle tax for the year so we can register it because we don’t have a bank account. We were a bit nervous about what the amount might be. Remember in my post about when we bought our van, and Victor said we didn’t have to pay the 19% tax – we were thinking we might have to pay that now. We sat and waited while the man typed on his computer for a long time – about 40 minutes! No idea what he was typing.  Then, he printed a paper, said he needed to have his supervisor approve it, and he’d be back. He came back and told us we needed to pay 172 Euros at the front desk. Yay!!!! Not 19% of 6200 Euros! We paid and were on our hopeful way.

KFZ Trip 3 – Saturday, August 20th

With all our important paperwork, including our tax receipt, we followed the same process as the day before. Parked, walked in, took our number, sat down, waited. After about 30 minutes we were up. We found the room with our number, sat down, let her know we wanted to register our van and handed over all the papers. She looked at it, looked up at us, and said, “You can’t do this here in Freiburg, your address is in Böblingen, you need to go there to do it.” Defeated once again. It would have been nice if the ones that were helping us the day before let us know that. Something else we learned – unlike in the U.S., you need to register your vehicle in the town the car’s address is in. I believe this is because they make you new plates on the spot and the plates are custom to your region. Example, our export plates were made in Rottweil, so the first part of our plates read RW, in Böblingen they read BB. In the states, you can drop in, pay for a new sticker and stick it on your plates. It was early in the day, as we arrived there before 9 so we sadly left without any progress. Now, we couldn’t do anything until Monday, everything was going to be closed on Sunday, and Italy would have to wait.

KFZ Trip 4 – Monday, August 22nd

Saturday after leaving Freiburg, we went to a campground we had stayed at when we first arrived in Germany. We relaxed and enjoyed a day of walking Bella through the woods and basically doing nothing! The sweet life! Sunday afternoon we headed to Böblingen and scoped out where we would be taking care of business the next day. Monday morning came and we arrived at the Böblingen Zulassungsstelle bright and early with all our paperwork. I’m going to abbreviate this experience because 2 1/2 hours later we were leaving.
Problem 1 – No bank account – we explained that we paid our taxes at the tax collector’s office so we shouldn’t need one. We showed the receipt and the paperwork. The woman called the man at the tax collector’s office in Freiburg, they chatted for about 5 minutes. She said she understood now and we didn’t need a bank account because we paid our taxes. Check
Problem 2 – She asked us why we were taking care of this now since we paid our export plates and insurance through the 31st – we’re basically wasting the rest of our month. We explained we wanted to travel to Italy and we needed to take care of this before it expires. What a nightmare that would have been if we waited until the 31st!
Problem 3 – We were not registered with the city. They give you a special form called the Anmeldung with a special stamp to show that you do in fact live where you say you live. In order to get the form, your landlord or the main tenant signs a different form called a Wohnungsbeberbestätigung, you bring it to the Bürgeramt, they type you info into the computer, and give you the Anmeldung with the special stamp.
What ended up happening with these road blocks on this day was we were given export plates for another 30 days. We now had until September 20th now to take care of business and keep chasing butterflies. As we were leaving, I asked the woman one more time, “So, if we register with the city and come back, we will be able to get real plates?” She said, “Yes, just register and bring your anmeldung with you, then you can be fully registered.”
With our new export plates we headed to Italy!

ADAC Insurance Trip 2 – Monday, August 22nd

Since our export plates come with insurance, we stopped at ADAC to let them know we didn’t need our policy to start until we sorted out our other paperwork. They said it was no problem, and the insurance isn’t activated until the KFZ puts in the code on our insurance paperwork. Check.

Wohnungsbeberbestätigung and Anmeldung – Tuesday, September 6th

We spent some time in Italy, then in Switzerland, then we decided we better try to take care of this real life stuff again. Back to Böblingen we went. We knew the first thing we needed to do was register with the city. We were using our friend Ben’s address and he said we could be “roommates”. We filled out the Wohnungsbeberbestätigung with the help of Google Translate and our friend Leonie (she’s the one who hooked us up with the vet in Hamburg)! We were nervous getting to the Bürgeramt because of all the trouble we’ve already had with the German Bureaucracy, but this was probably the easiest part. We went in, got a number, was called to desk one, they took the form and Dustin’s passport, typed into the computer, printed off a piece of paper, stamped it, and we had our Anmeldung.

KFZ Trip 5 – Tuesday, September 6th

We were excited this time. We had our registration with the city, we had our taxes paid, we had our TÜV, we had our insurance – we had everything she wanted last time! I say she, because when our number was called we had the same lady as the last time we were at the Böblingen KFZ. Once we were at her desk she started looking at our paperwork, then asked for our bank account number! We said we didn’t have one because she said last time we didn’t need it because we already paid our taxes! She looked at our stuff, looked at us, and said, “You need to get a bank account still. You paid taxes on export plates, not on the real plates.” We left defeated. Again.

Bank Trip 1 – Tuesday, September 6th

How hard could it be to open a bank account in Germany? We got on the Google machine to look at some banks. An expat site recommend Deutsche Bank for easy around the world access and an English speaking hotline. We had what we needed to open an account – the anmeldung and a passport. We found one close enough to walk to, and luckily they were still open. We walked in and asked to open a bank account, to which we were told we had to make an appointment. It seemed kind of odd because we were the only customers at the time, there were other bankers there at their desks, and they were open for another 2 hours, but it makes sense because, well, it’s Germany. They could squeeze us in the next day at 10:00 am.

Bank Trip 2 – Wednesday, September 7th

I didn’t go to the bank with Dustin on this fine morning. I actually worked on typing this whole section for our blog (For sections Finalizing Paperwork to Bank Trip 1) while he was out and about! The bank was just about as easy as registering with the city, except for we didn’t have to use Google translate to fill out paperwork! Dustin was back within an hour, and it was about a 15 minute walk. He said it was quick, easy, and painless and took less than 30 minutes – which I think is funny because before we left for Europe, we opened a Chase account in Florida so we could order foreign currency for free and for some reason that took almost 2 hours! Yay, Florida! Anyway, we have a German bank account, so we’re feeling pretty official.

ADAC Insurance Trip 3 – Wednesday, September 7th

We stopped at ADAC again just to be sure we still had insurance. We wanted to be sure all our ducks were in a row before KFZ hell again. We were all good on insurance so we were set.

KFZ Trip 6 – Wednesday, September 7th

This had to be it. The 6th time is a charm. Parked. Walked in. Grabbed a ticket. Waited. The lady that had helped us twice before was leaving with her lunchbox. We waited. Our number was called and we anxiously walked to the desk. Dustin pulled out all the needed paperwork. The lady clarified we wanted regular plates, not export plates. Yes. Yes, we want regular plates. Please. Please! She gave us a plastic card with a number on it to take to the machine in the lobby. You put the card in, it says pay 28 Euro, you pay, then get a receipt. We don’t even know what we paid for there, because then we go outside to the license plate making store in the parking lot, give them the receipt, they start making the plates on the spot, while they ask for another 34 Euro. At this point we didn’t care.

We were about to have REAL German license plates. Less than 2 minutes later, we were holding warm, freshly made plates! We took those back inside to the desk where we were being helped. We sit back down and gave her the plates. She put a couple of stickers on the plates and handed them back. Then, she said, “Have a nice day!” And we were done! WE DID IT!  As I write this (on Wed.Sept.7), we have left Böblingen and are driving back to Walenstadt to visit some friends again! I won’t be able to post this until I have internet again. It’ll be a big day when I have internet again!

What We Learned

Yes, you CAN register a vehicle in Germany with a United States Passport.
Yes, you should be more organized than us.
If I were do this all again, starting with the day we landed in Stuttgart, here’s the order in which I would do the process.
1. Drive to Böblingen to fill out the Wohnungsbeberbestätigung paper. (free)
2. Bring the Wohnungsbeberbestätigung form to the city to register with the city to get the Anmeldung and fancy stamp. (free)
3. Open a bank account with the above paperwork and passport. (5euro/month)
4. Van shop. Buy van. We would be given temporary plates for 1-3 days to get insurance and to register the vehicle. (Price-whatever you spend! We spent 6200 euro on our van)
5. Go to ADAC to get insurance (If we were REALLY super on the ball and  knowledgeable, before we left the states, we would have asked Minnesota DMV to print out our driving history to show that Dustin has been driving for 23 years. That would have saved us a lot of money in insurance. I believe that is something you have to do in person, though). (1800euro for the year)
6. Take all the above to the KFZ. Get the white card thing for the machine(28euro) to get a receipt to get the license plates made (34euro) to bring back inside to get stickers and all your things back.
7. Celebrate by chasing dreams and butterflies around Europe in our new van with real plates!
8. Total cost: 8122 euro
9. We spent a bit more than that, probably in the range of 700-800 euro because the export plates with insurance were expensive (about 175e/month), the taxes we paid at the tax collector’s office (172e) were taxes paid on export plates, not on real plates so that was basically wasted, and we spent a considerable time driving around and waiting around handling this business! We also had a lot of fun chasing butterflies and avoiding this real life stuff so it’s fun to dream about doing this again the correct German way, but we’ve learned a lot and we’ve been where we’ve needed to be when we’ve needed to be there.
Thanks for reading and I hope this could help even one expat trying to register a vehicle in Germany.

More to Come

This is a van adventure in progress. We have plans to insulate the walls and the ceiling (again), change up the walls, and put down some flooring. Check back to see our progress!