MC Rental in Germany/Italy

Going to Munich, Germany area and northeastern Italy for 2 weeks in June. Not a motorcycle trip, but I'd like to rent a bike for a couple days. Anybody have a recommendation for a rental shop? Doesn't need to be a BMW. Thanks.

Milan may or may not exactly be "northeastern Italy", but in any case my wife and I rented from CIMT there a few years ago. Nice people, nice bike.

http://www.cimt.it/milan_motorcycle_rental.htm

What did you end up doing?

We also rented from CIMT a few years ago. It was pretty seamless and they were very easy going.

I assume you want to rent in Italy?

If it's Munich, try Karl Maier (www.motorrad-kmaier.de) and Bike&Travel Service (bike-travel-service.de) AKA BMW Motorrad Vermietung (Motorcycle Renter - separate from BMW, although on BMW Center grounds). I have no direct contact with Maier beyond reading his web site. He's recommended by Rob Beach of Beach's Tours. I'm talking with BTS, trying to sort out the per diem distance (300 km/day doesn't get it, when it's 350-425 km between Munich and Andermatt alone and worse to Lugano, which looms large in my wife's plans...). Film at 11...

I pulled the trigger with BTS. I'm still not happy about the distance limitation. Frankly, I think it's absurd to cap distance on an extended rental. I begged my way up from 2100 km (300 km/day x 7) to 2450 km by buying(!) a 350 km day. I told them, literally, I felt penalized for going with a longer rental. They're not impressed. But the rest of the package works and they have what I want (Maier doesn't).

If you do 300k a day in the Alps you haven't stopped for lunch or a leak. I know it doesn't "seem" like a lot of miles but on those roads it is. I consider myself a pretty hard rider but in '10 when we did 13 days in the Alps I averaged 34 mph during the whole trip.

Duane

Um... I looked up my GPS data for last year's Edelweiss tour. The true distance, the odo was 10 km higher, was 1487 km or 298 km/day over 5 days. The total trip time was 9.75 hr/day with about 4 hr/day of stopped time (tolls, anything else that didn't register as moving, as well as lunch and coffee stops). Oddly most of the rubbernecking was on the passes or at lunch/coffee. The one big exception was the first day, with time at Linderhof palace and photo ops for Neuschwanstein castle. Yes, a 60 km/h average speed isn't too far off the mark, but I'm quite willing to have a longer day to put in the distance needed.

My more or less standard plan is to take a mid-morning/afternoon break at whatever landmark makes sense, and opt for something closer to an imbus or open air "tavern" (please don't let it rain!!), if not a BYO lunch, than a get-serious luncheon. I operate that way riding here and it works for me. With the above in mind, a 325 to 350 km average isn't unlikely. That, of course, blows through 300 km/day. And, 'scuse me for being blunt, NFW am I adjusting my trip to the renter's notion of what I'm going to do. It's my money that keeps them going, I'll pick my routes, thank you.

Keep in mind the original trip plan was to run for two weeks and use my own bike. That tanked, in part, because SWMBO was not at all thrilled with the idea (for good reasons as well as " wives, can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em" reasons). And, in part because Air Canada is just downright stupid about not having a '17 rate card available until mid-April. Not too clever to bet the price will be right and that there'll be a fall-back rental if they fall through, to say nothing of making a ton of reservations predicated on the assumption will go wrong with getting a bike.

So I'm back to a week, on someone else's bike, and trying to at least get pieces of the two week plan. Which means longer days, and maybe a bit of pushing where possible.