Heading from Munich to Salzburg on Monday, the wife was driving, about 100 meters from the Austrian border, a plain car pulled in front of us and the guy in the passenger seat put his hand out the window holding a red reflector device. The driver put his hazard lights on and slowed us down, cruised onto the shoulder and we followed. Both of us were very confused by this.

The pair of them got out of the car. The driver was wearing a light blue track suit, and the passenger was wearing similarly average clothing. For cops, they were pretty shabbily dressed and had no distinguishing The driver flashed a badge quickly and took our passports and the green booklet with all of the car info. They peeked around the interior, then went back to their car for a bit.

The wife told me that she hadn't been speeding, but I gave her crap anyway because that's what I do.

They came back to the car and asked us to pop the hood. They poke around the guts of the car quite intensively for at least 5 minutes, then asked us to open the driver's door to look at the panel.

When asked what the problem was they said it was just a routine check. It seemed like they were looking for drugs or something, but then never looked in the trunk. We asked them again what they were looking for in the engine and he said some German word that I didn't recognize. As I've learned all my 10 German words from watching "Hogan's Heroes" this came as no surprise.

The whole thing lasted 10-15 minutes on the shoulder of the highway. They gave us back our passports and booklet and told us to be on our merry way.

Is this normal?

Thanks,
Brian