Originally Posted by
soitgoes
The general rule is that you do have to surrender your license. However, the FeV allows officials to make exceptions at their discretion.
If you surrender your license, the office will generally keep it and you can exchange it at any time you want.
However, as I said before, if you have a California driver's license, you aren't able to exchange your license in Germany. You can get a new license with somewhat reduced driver training requirements, but an exchange is not possible.
Right... I have a driver's license from one of the states that does have full reciprocity with Germany, so I'm not worried about that... the California question was more about driving back in the US (in a state without reciprocity) again after I had exchanged for a German license, but I think you clarified all that for me (I can just exchange my license back later). Thanks for your help!
I was worried, because I know in Austria, they don't keep your US license, they send it back to the state of issue, who probably doesn't keep it valid.