Stopped on the Autobahn by the police

just had a 3 day visit to munich ,was in hire car on the way out on autobahn 8 to innsbruck direction,saw a blue bmw with 3 guys sort of leaning on it staring at me has i drove past,i nearly waved at them or something,anyway 2 mins later there behind me red and blue lights flashing pulled me over,searched the car ,searched me,and i had to justify why i was in munchen,who i saw ,what i did,not the first time ive had the pleasure of european policing, and they where really dissapointed they had nothing to do me over,i could see it in their faces talking with each other ,then gave me my documents back,and off ,no courtesy shown at all.

er, do you want sympathy here?
I´m not too sure why you posted this - are you pissed off with them? - then maybe you should have posted under "vent"?
...???

12 commas, one full-stop & no caps. I was out of breath when reading this - and also wondering as to the point...

Maybe you looked like someone who was on a wanted list, who knows...

If it makes you feel better, my brother was once stopped at night by the police. They did an alcohol test, and drug screening, found nothing, but seemed desperate to want to find something he did wrong, so they went on checking the first aid kit etc, and asked about scratches (possible accidents) on the car (which was our parents'). Of course they found nothing, so they let him go in the end.

Did you ask them what they wanted? Police in every European country do spot checks within a certain distance to the borders. Possibly your innate good looks and snazzy car caught their attention.

no point ,no sympathy, no grammer advise needed, just a little experience posted in life in germany, i didnt ask sara ,i guessed they where looking for drugs.( also i never wrote why me? what where they looking for,that was edited in)

The original title of "halt police" should be preserved for prosperity.

If your written English is anything to go by, you probably look like a foreigner and the Police* are notorious for stopping people who look like foreigners. Tis , unfortunately the way of the world! Try not to let it cloud your judgement of Munich and its people.

^{*Not specifically the German police, just the police in general. No matter where you are in the world}.

VeronaSteve, does your car have Italian license plates? The incident you describe above sounds similar to the only time I've been stopped in Germany, and I was travelling back from a concert late at night in an Italian colleague's car. I was quite surprised how aggressively they handled us considering we'd done absolutely nothing wrong and this was an apparently 'random' stop and check. The Italian colleague said it was the third or fourth time it had happened to him that year...

Very similar to my experience. It became a bit ridiculous in the end with them demanding to see a list of specific tools you're obliged to have present in your car at any time whilst driving in Germany.

no clouds allerhausen.i love munich and most of its people,i was in an italian reg car ,and maybe theres a problem with drug running, and yes my english is awfull( one l or two,can never remember) but i get by.

Was it red?

ja red,did you see me

It is also possible that they were suspecting the car was stolen. Such things happen (rental cars being stolen, and then resold in another EU country).

yes you could be right,they asked for the vehicle details pretty quickly, but they were tapping any panels inside and looked under the car.

The cops were probably looking for someone on their list ...

Italian mafia feud spreads to Germany with six execution-style killings ... Germany a hiding place for mafia on the run

Germany is a transit country. A large volume of traffic (including criminals) passes through it. It has several borders. Cigarettes are cheaper in Poland, soft drugs are sold legally in Holland, Swiss banks don’t ask many questions, etc., etc.

There is no such thing as the simple, typical criminal, whether foreigner or otherwise. If a blonde-haired white man robs a bank and drives off in a red Ford, should the police search for a black woman riding a blue moped?

Many people who passed by during your „ordeal“ decided immediately that you were typical and deserved your fate. But if the same happened to them, would they agree that they are typical too? Situation: A driver who is rudely overtaken sees the offender a short time later being checked by police; and feels a sense of deep satisfaction. But when stopped later for a similar manoeuvre, protests abject innocence and shows a complete lack of understanding for being stopped at all.

You might not like your car being stopped by police when you are driving it, but what about when someone unauthorised is at the wheel?

Undoubtedly, the German police could be better, but that is more a problem of the respective State than the individual. If you feel mistreated, you can complain officially.

Were you swerving back n forth across the road lines? I saw one of those TV Deutsch reports where plain clothes coppers drive on the autobahn and look for SOMETHING to bring in the local revenue... One stop = 40 euro hit. Speaking of Polizei, I remember when I first arrived in these parts, taking my dog for a walk and a van w/ 6 SWAT looking police dudes stopping to check if I had a leash on my 3 Kg puffball. I knew then this was a lame place. Btw, the puffball is a family pet...i'd much rather prefer a G Shepard or Lab myself, but so be it.

As complaining to the Government about the Government always gets results...

You are not alone - this has been my experience also. No courtesy shown what so ever - it is my belief that they do not even think of you as human. Don't you jsut love the sullen glum looks on the ugly pigs' faces. I think Bayern, especially the Munich area, is a police state.

No sympathy from me coz you were not strip searched...

I got stopped last week in a Raststatte. I had just driven away from the petrol tanks going into the car park when I saw 2 Opel Astra estates pull out from behind the restuarant. I drove further on and pulled into a parking spot to have a ciggie and a drink when the 2 cars pulled in on each side of me. Got out of the car and they asked for my papers which were in the boot. I gave them to the older policeman who passed them onto a young policewoman to do the paperwork. Out of the other car, 3 policemen got out but just stood around chatting to each other. At this point nothing had been said about why I was stopped although they did try to talk in English to me as I still have an old UK pink (and green) paper license but I corrected them and we chatted in German. While the policewomen was on the radio to check the details I had a good friendly chat about the current economy, work, etc. with the bloke and we had a bit of a laugh. Eventually he went back to his car to find out what was happening and told her to forget it and let me on. As we were shaking hands I asked him if that was all as I though I had done something wrong (I though I had as I was still putting my seatbelt on when they originally saw me) but he just laughed. Just a routine check...

I remember also getting stopped a while ago by the police from behind with their loudspeaker. They though I was using a telephone as I had my hand on my ear, I was just having a quick nap at the traffic lights actually and pointed out the hands free set. They were friendly as hell. In fact each time I've had dealings with the police here they have always been very helpful and friendly and have gone out of there way to help me. I don't know why people have so many problems...

Whats the problem when police stops someone (unless the police are corrupt buggers)? Why should one be worried about that when they haven't done anything wrong? After sayin' all this, I know that it sometimes feels like a bad experience (more so, if the police guys are rude).

Recently, I was driving from Davos, Switzerland to Zurich and stopped by, at a cool location, beside a lake and between huge mountains. As I got out of the car, I was approached by 2 Swiss policemen and they checked all inside the car, my passport and then cross-checked it with some central authority, checked my camera too (dont know why they want to check my camera?). They just did their job and they weren't rude. I also had a nice conversation with them (in my not-so-fluent Deutsch and their funny Swiss German).

The A8 between Munich and Austria is one of Europe's major transit routes.
All sorts of naughtiness goes, on so the filth are over that road like a rash.

Over the past four years I've done a lot of driving around Germany and crossed every border with our car except the German-Danish border. I have yet to get stopped for anything. (Though the speed cameras have had their way with me often enough.) Perhaps my white CR-V just doesn't arouse suspicion (go figure). But when I was working as a defense attorney, I had a lot of clients coming back from Holland who were caught with drugs after they were stopped (or approached at rest stops) on the A3 and searched. (I suspect they saw young people driving back after a weekend in a car with Army-issued plates and decided to play the odds.)

Potentially you were somewhere near a Swiss Reduit fortress without knowing it.

me and my boyf lived in Munich for 1 year. During that time he was stopped approx 22-25 times by police who wanted to breathalyse him, check pupil dilation, even make him do a urine test. My boyf is from Wiesbaden and had an Erbach reg on the car. He also wore a cap. We think that was the reason. It got so bad that all the police knew him by name! Honest.

So you're not alone in this

... why is his car registered in Erbach (Odenwaldkreis) when he's from Wiesbaden (three district over to the northwest)?

And it's not how you look. It's where you drive - especially around the usual nighttime activity places, they'll of course check for DUI.

Last Sunday the police were pulling people up on the road to Munich airport. They had 3 cars in the little lay-by and the police were stood in the road slowing everyone to walking pace whilst peering into the cars. I think they were looking for someone specific but do not know for certain. The three cars they had pulled over had all the doors open and the occupants were carrying what appeared to paperwork.

Sorry Monkstown, all were local plates (ED and FS), none of the blokes looked foreign or minority group and there was 1 Fiat, 1 Audi hire car (HH plate with a "diesel" sticker on the fuel cap) and a Merc (a nice little cross-section of vehicles).

Copper that peered inside my car just smiled at my wife and waived us through.

I have been stopped in Austria to have my vignette thing checked though being stopped once in 17 years of driving in Austria, I can hardly complain. Nice copper actually, just doing his job.

and a van w/ 6 SWAT looking police dudes stopping to check if I had a leash on my 3 Kg puffball.

That reminds me of when we lived in the US and I was (gasp) meandering 2 blocks to a friend's bbq with (hell will freeze over) an unwrapped bottle of wine in my hands. A police car passed me, turned round, stopped - all to tell me it was illegal.

Yep, let's not worry about those 100s of unsolved murders 5 minutes down the road in DC, let's just tackle the heart of imminent crime - a 40 year old wandering down the road with a bottle of wine (Not drinking said bottle of wine you understand. Said bottle of wine not even open).

kato - his dad's from odenwald. It happened both at night and during the day. in munich city.

if it was during Oktoberfest, perhaps they looking for stolen Maßkrüge?

Well, they certainly might do if they followed the post 9/11 strategy of airport custom officials. Am I a muslim? Am I brown? No, but I am wearing shoes, so I'd better be searched.

If I understand your suggestive and illogical post correctly, potential terrorists are brown-skinned and Muslim? (Easy to identify presumably, because the men are always bearded, wear a khaftan with turban, and the females always wear a headscarf.)

So I assume that Sikhs too, are actually [closet] Muslims. And the cunning old German widows with their weathered brown skin who visit the local graveyard on Sundays wearing their black headscarves, are in fact terrorist sleepers. Hmm, I have been to Saudi Arabia, am somewhat brown from the sun, have a beard, a tent and even a khaftan and a djellaba in my wardrobe! Hey, I’m Muslim and nobody told me!

Here just three examples which belie your comment regarding „brown“:
Adam Gadahn, white American - believed high up in al Qaeda hierachy, seen in videos applauding the 9/11 hijackers
John Lindh, white American - captured while fighting for the Taliban
David Hicks, white Australian - fought together with the Taliban until captured

Read less Toytown and more history. Terrorism is not, and has never been restricted just to religious belief or colour.

Sal'aam a'leihkum

I have heard before that the police as sometimes known as „filth“. What exactly do you mean when you use this term?

errr the Police?

The Filth - British term for the rozzers.

Bizarre.

Just read some more posts and it's like someone is deliberately trying too hard to use expanded vocabulary.

Explain?

errrrrm... just seemed to fit in more rhythmicly (sp) than "pigs".