There’s an interesting thread over on BeechTalk about planning flights in Europe :
I have a feeling that Beechtalk is not readable at all unless you create a (free) login.
Also, after only a cursory read, I don’t get this:
Peter wrote:
I don’t get this:…
Me neither. And what is the definition of “EASA airspace”? The same forum talk as everywhere else I would say … 
It seems like he describes what you needed to do when there was no Autorouter… I would quote some parts but “Again, I would very much like to ask you to refrain from copying any of the following to another forum”. But having to manually straighten out the route from two different ones that were found “changing a few waypoints” is a rare occurrence when you use Autorouter. Also the fact that he prefers to file with OLIVIA or DFS-AIS because he feels they are more reliable when his flight plan needs to be “forwarded to different countries” shows a lack of understanding of the system of IFR flight plans (which are distributed by Eurocontrol), as well as a good deal of masochism.
All in all, the only thing I learned from his posts is that you call up Information and not Approach/Radar when you depart on a Z flight plan in Germany. I thought they were only for VFR flights. But then I have never flown IFR from a small German airfield yet.
I think he makes the whole thing over-complicated given the tools we have available today.
Rwy20 wrote:
All in all, the only thing I learned from his posts is that you call up Information and not Approach/Radar when you depart on a Z flight plan in Germany. I thought they were only for VFR flights. But then I have never flown IFR from a small German airfield yet.
You can try your luck with information (which requires about the same amount of masochism as filing flightplans via DFS-AIS) but calling the radar sector in charge directly works a lot better. Usually the radio operator of the airfield from which one departs VFR knows which frequency to call. And in most cases he will be able to get your clearance via phone for you which facilitates the VFR-IFR transition a lot.
I never call information in Germany when departing VFR for IFR pickup. Always the RADAR sector.
I also call Radar only, for example Munich Radar on 128.25 when daparting my uncontrolled field (EDML) with a Z Fligh Plan. I think “Information” will only hand you over to a radar frequency.
in Germany, one only does when the correct Radar frequency is unknown.
So I guess that I had better not read the posts then. ;) But he does get some extra smiley-points from me for the effort.
