Thank you all for your quick replies!

I have sent out an email to Europcar about taking the car to the 2 other countries, a border card, environment zone stickers and insurance effectivity.

I have tried to book hotels which have parking, and have emailed and let them know that we will have a VW minivan... waiting to hear back from them.

Yes, the one way rental was incredibly expensive - almost x4 the same trip using trains! And that is not even counting tolls, gas and parking! I am trying to take the Mastercard attitude... the experience will be priceless.

Fortunately we have 2.5 drivers with stick shift knowledge (the .5 is me - I am guessing driving a stick minivan at my age is substantially different than cruising on a twenty year old saab at 19 )

Does anyone know if there are substantial wait times in the Germany-to-Czech border, or especially in the Czech-to-Austria border?

Thanks again!
DG