Registering a bike in Germany as non-resident
 

Basically a friend and I plan on travelling to Germany, purchasing motorbikes and riding them around eastern Europe and the Caucasus.

My main question is: Is it possible to purchase bikes and register them in Germany? What is the procedure here? We both have dual Australian and EU citizenship, are licensed motorcycle riders in Australia, and have friends who live in Germany (ie an address we could get things sent to).

In addition to this, would we be able to easily purchase CTP insurance (green card) easily?

Thanks!

Can't help with the insurance but I understand that Germany is one of the only places in the EU a foreign non-resident can register a bike. Search the forum and google for 'German Export Plates' to learn more about it - you can't re-enter Germany once you have left but the whole point is to export so they are designed for your purposes.

It might be relevant to consider how you will dispose of the bikes?

If you have willing friends / family then having them register a bike and grant you permission to use it would mean you can go anywhere and it will be easier to sell it in Germany again at the end. They may face some liability but depending on how much they love / trust you it might be ok. That would also make it easier with getting a carnet and then being able to prove that you didn't dispose of the bike overseas.

Another thing to bear in mind is route planning - when I was planning my now-aborted Caucasus trip I found it a little tricky to negotiate the closed borders without too much backtracking. As one can't travel Russia-Georgia, Turkey-Armenia, Armenia-Azerbaijan or into Azerbaijan after visiting Nagorno-Karabakh I was planning on starting in Iran and then circling anti-clockwise. If, like me you have difficulties entering Iran then you will need to go Eastern Europe-Turkey-Georgia-Azerbaijan-Georgia-Armenia-Georgia-Turkey-Home. It's a bit of a pain but luckily there are a few alternate routes so you avoid too much backtracking.

I made a very detailed itinerary with places, attractions and distances around the Caucasus that I'd be happy to share if you are in need of ideas. PM me if you want a copy but I'll definitely want to see photos of what I missed out on.

Thanks for the response! Very helpful indeed. Unable to PM as I have less than 5 posts on the board... Are you able to send to me regardless?

Our rough itinerary is to start in Berlin, travel east through Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, then ferry to Georgia. From there Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, then possibly Bulgaria or maybe Greece. Not 100% sure if all of this is possible yet. Especially the Caucasus leg.. Any advice you could offer here would be greatly appreciated!

In terms of getting rid of the bikes we would either try and sell them in greece or ship them back home (Australia). This depends on what price we could get in Greece vs cost of shipping home.. Most likely the latter.