VAT refund

If you intend to claim for VAT refund from all of the shopping done in Europe, I would advised not to make Switzerland, Norway and Turkey as your last stop unless if you are flying there. Why? That's because those countries are not part of the European Union (EU). So, if you shopped at a EU country, you would need to get EU custom stamp on the VAT forms before finally arriving at a non-EU country and vice versa. And the only way for you to get EU custom stamp would be at the airport or train stations at the border of Switzerland.


My friends who were not able to get their refund due to this has warned me about it and that's when I researched on it. I stumbled upon this website, http://thetravelersblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/vat-refunds-in-europe/ and look at the number of comments/discussions on it. Wow! So, I tried searching for a similar route that I will be taking (Stuttgart, Germany to Bern, Switzerland) from that looonngggg thread of comments/discussions and ta-dah! I found it! The nearest EU Immigration Office would be Lake Konstanz.

Off to Lake Konstanz we go, a 3 hour drive from Stuttgart, together with our claimable items and passport. The immigration officers would usually want to check on the expensive items (refunds > EUR100). Lake Konstanz's immigration office is located at the main train station (Hauptbahnhof) which was easy to find. Then, we saw an A4 paper stuck at the entrance which shows a picture of a train with a tick custom stamp and picture of a car with a cross custom stamp. Uh-oh....really?! They must have changed the rules to only allow those on the train and passes by this station to have their VAT refund form stamp. Oh nooo....We still went into the office with our thick skins to clarify the situation....


Me: Hi, we actually drove down from Stuttgart to get a custom stamp for the 
       VAT refund. Would it be possible for us to get it here? 
Officer: You came by car? 
Me: Yes.
Officer: No, we can't. You have to get the stamp somewhere else. 
Me: But I researched and that this is the nearest custom office to Stuttgart 
       unless you know of any?
Officer: Hmm..I'm not sure.
Me: I hope you can help us out here. We deliberately drove from Stuttgart to 
      get this stamp and we are leaving to Switzerland directly from Stuttgart 
      tomorrow by train. There is no way for us to get the stamp. 
Officer: Hmm....
Me: Please....
Officer: OK...OK...pass me all your forms. 
Me: OMG! Thank you so much!!

If I could hug the officer, I would!

So, everyone, you can give Lake Konstanz a try but I'm not too sure whether you will be fortunate enough to meet a considerate officer like me.

Allocate time to queue/walk

I'm the sort of traveler who prefers to plan for my own itinerary whenever I travel. It gives me the flexibility to choose where and when to visit the place without needing to follow a tour group. However, during my first trip to Europe, I learnt that you must allocate queue time especially for popular tourist attractions.

During my amateur itinerary planning days, I had timings on when to wake up, have breakfast, time to reach each of the locations and etc. I still remember my husband saying "I only have half an hour for breakfast?! What if I need to go to the toilet after??". Haha...The trip finally came and obviously, all the timing was off!! That was because I totally forgot to consider the duration to queue or search/walk to the location. Accumulation of 10-30 minutes of walking/queuing could set the itinerary to go haywire. :P We even needed to queue up for 45 minutes to get up to the Eiffel Tower! Due to that, we had to skip one or two art museums. Oh well...we can't cover everything that we planned for, can we? 

Conclusion, make sure you allocate enough time to queue/search/walk to yr destination! 

My first entry

This blog has been on my to-do list for about a year now. And finally, it's published!! Woo hoo! *popping champagne*

Here is my channel in sharing travel tips. Hope it helps all travelers out there!! :)