RV Having Fun Yet? : Despite Small Hassles, Renting a Recreational Vehicle for a Foreign or U.S. Vacation Means Having a Hotel on Wheels and Sightseeing at Your Own Pace : Europe

There is a friendly truck stop on a back road outside of Budapest, Hungary, that serves homemade goulash, plays country music and has American flags and trucking posters on the walls.

You won’t find it in any travel guides. My wife, Fran, and I were lucky to find it at all, steering our tiny rented recreational vehicle past a series of mysterious little “TIR” signs with arrows that we hoped would lead to a campground at the end.

It was dusk and we found it at the end of a dirt road, surrounded by a chain-link fence, with trucks parked everywhere. This was a campground? We stopped inside the entrance. A group of people in front of what looked like an office stared at us. We stared back, then decided, what the heck, and drove on in, scrambling for the Hungarian phrase book.

Parkolhatok itt ma ejjel? (“May we park here tonight?”), we mumbled to the man who came over to meet us.

Miraculously, he understood, and pointed to a corner of the grounds with trees and tables. Then he made eating motions and pointed inside.

We nodded happily. We had a place to park our hotel on wheels for the night--plus the rare treat of eating out.

That’s the way it was for most days of our four-week tour of west-central Europe last fall. Despite a degree of daily uncertainty, our experiences traveling through the Western United States in our own RVs has given us a certain security that, when you’re driving your own kitchen, bedroom and bathroom, all you need is a safe place to park at night.

On other trips to Europe, we had rented cars and stayed in B&Bs;, knowing that we could enjoy places at our own pace and make occasional impulsive side trips, instead of being enslaved by the frantic 10-minute eating-and-buying frenzies we witnessed when we spotted busloads of vacationers on package tours. After all, how many tour buses would wait an hour in a small village on the North Sea, as we did, for a barge to come in so we could see how the locks work?

Our idea was not to save money. And we probably didn’t, compared to the average group tour. The RV rental cost us just under $4,000, although two couples could rent a larger one and split the cost. What we gained was independence, flexibility and the chance to meet people. Plus, we had the security of not having to hunt for a hotel room every night.

Because of direct airline connections, Amsterdam and Frankfurt are two of the best cities for renting RVs on the Continent, although they are available in several others. We chose Amsterdam, and scheduled the trip to start after Labor Day because the weather would be cooler, the crowds down and the RV rental price cheaper. Springtime is equally opportune for the same reasons.

A trip like this needs planning, and we started researching about six months ahead. We found several rental companies by calling around to foreign tourism offices in Los Angeles and U.S. car rental agencies with overseas connections. We finally decided to reserve a 15 1/2-foot Chausson, a French-built rig powered by a four-cylinder Ford diesel engine with a five-speed manual transmission. While short on high-end power, it got 20 miles per gallon (converted from European liters-per-kilometer) and, geared down, climbed grades as steep as 28% on the way up to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, the Nazi leader’s mountaintop getaway outside Berchtesgaden, Germany.

We drove 3,649 miles, not counting the ferries we took across fiords or the flatbed trains through miles-long tunnels in the Alps. In nine countries, we saw castles and concentration camps, butterflies and battlefields, the Danube and the Rhine and, in the Netherlands, all those windmills (and not one miniature golf course!). Highlights were sometimes planned, sometimes a surprise. We scheduled in the Oktoberfest in Munich, the Floriade celebration of flowers in the Netherlands and Lipizzaner stallions and Strauss waltzes in Vienna. We blundered into a fox hunt while looking for a castle along a German back road.

For the places we wanted to see--the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and Germany, with Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and bits of France and Hungary thrown in--and how we wanted to see them, the RV served us well. With only a general outline of our route, we drove south from Amsterdam through flat, green fields, and a ferry to Belgium led us to the canals of Brugge and, later, two of history’s most famous battlegrounds: Waterloo and Bastogne, site of the Battle of the Bulge. Averaging about 125 miles a day, we worked our way around Lake Geneva, past the Matterhorn in Switzerland, then east to Budapest before heading back west through Vienna, Munich and back into the Netherlands.

The imagery remains . . . window boxes full of flowers on every house in every village . . . the lack of litter along the roads . . . Germans really wearing lederhosen . . . and the sudden, drab contrast upon entering Hungary, yet to lose the gray of Communist decay.

Our Eastern Europe itinerary was somewhat limited by the RV insurance, which did not cover trips into Poland, Czechoslovakia and republics of the former Yugoslavia. We considered leaving the RV in Vienna to visit Prague, the Czech capital, but time was a constraint. Another reason to do it all again.

Driving was easy. That was my job. Navigation was a nightmare. That was Fran’s job. Early on we became convinced that whoever put up Europe’s road signs must have trained with Caltrans, which has a San Diego Freeway that doesn’t go within 60 miles of San Diego.

The best advice we got was from a book called “Travel Europe With Your Motor Home,” which was also helpful for suggestions of out-of-the-way places to see and things to do. It became our bible.

The authors advised having at least three maps of every place we planned to go. Some European maps don’t match the road signs, which are confusing enough in themselves, at least for Americans unaccustomed to European ways. We weren’t used to seeing the names of cities in their native languages--Wien for Vienna, for example. Villages appear on some maps and vanish on others. Signs can’t decide which way to point.

The Netherlands was the worst, Germany the best. The Dutch often offered us two different routes to a destination, or, sometimes, no directions at all. Other countries hyphenated suburbs with the main cities, as in Bad Aibling-Munchen (Munich).

Also, Europe’s old cities were not laid out on perpendicular lines but grew from the inside out, in circles--which is often how we drove. One day we went looking for the glockenspiel in Graz, the large Austrian city near the Hungarian border. How delightful it would be, we thought, to listen to the music as the little figures moved around the giant town clock. Usually, we found, signs indicating “centre ville” (center city) would lead us right downtown, but in Graz they literally led us around in a circle until, after three laps and with the navigator approaching a nervous breakdown, we decided to scuttle the excursion and give up on the glockenspiel .

Against sound advice, we braved most large cities without getting into serious trouble--although admittedly we left behind a string of illegal U-turns, wrong directions on one-way streets and sudden moves that tested the patience of our hosts.

In the cities, they still use tiny metal street signs nailed to the walls of buildings with print about this big . By the time you can read them, you realize you’re in the wrong lane. And even if you could read them, the streets change names every other block.

While getting lost soon became an everyday occurrence, the people were invariably friendly and helpful. In most cases, they gamely fought their way past our language barrier to point us in the right direction. On a rainy day in Offenburg, a small German town, we asked a couple at a pharmacy for the best route back to the autobahn. After seeing that we failed to understand their detailed explanation in German, they got into their car, gestured for us to follow and led us out of town to be certain we got on the right road.

Directional signs aside, we found continental Europe a delight to drive. Everyone drives on the right-hand side of the road and uses his turn signals properly. We were apprehensive about the high-speed motorways and autobahns, where speeds beyond 100 m.p.h. are common. But Europeans have a novel understanding of the rules of the road: fast cars in the fast lane, slower cars in the slow lane. When a German Mercedes-Benz approaches from behind flashing his lights, other drivers don’t get mad, they get over. Californians seem unclear on this concept.

But there are minor frustrations: a lack of highway shoulders on which to pull off in order to read a map or take a picture; picturesque but alarmingly narrow village streets, and the European habit of placing traffic lights where you can’t see them.

The Netherlands seemed to have the most hazards. There are few pedestrians but zillions of bicyclists, all of whom think they have the right of way (although a cab driver told us they didn’t). We couldn’t decide whether it was more dangerous to drive or walk in the Netherlands.

European campgrounds, we found, did not resemble their U.S. counterparts. Instead of public spreads by secluded streams or lakes in the countryside, most were more like trailer parks: near towns, privately run, close-quartered and overpriced. Few had individual water or electrical hookups, and sewer connections were rare. If there was a power source it was one plug in the middle of the camp, with an array of dropcords leading off like octopus tentacles. So we soon ditched the campground guides, not only saving money but enjoying other overnight spots we found along the way. Mainly, we used roadside rest areas, which are located every two to four miles along the European motorways. That’s right, every two to four miles. By comparison, there are two rest areas between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

On the other hand, most European rest areas don’t have rest rooms, only picnic tables. Bushes in the back seem to fill the need for the natives. Where there was no rest area or truck stop, a parking lot, city park or wide spot well off the road was fine. If there was no one to ask permission about a parking location, we simply did it. Nobody ever stopped us, but we also were careful to be clean, quiet and inconspicuous.

A confession: We did not spend every night in the RV. One night we slept in a castle--Schloss Spangenberg, a real 780-year-old fairy-tale castle with a moat, drawbridge, turrets, dungeon and empty suit of armor in the hall, not to mention a dining room, central heating, telephones and cable TV.

We capitulated to trailer parks only once, in Munich, where we parked in a large, crowded place near bus connections--although our RV was backed up to a canal with ducks and geese.

Since much of our driving took us to small villages and along back roads, we interacted with many people unaccustomed to dealing with tourists. But we didn’t expect language problems. “Everybody in Europe speaks English,” we’d been told. Wrong.

We found that picking up a few key words or pointing on a map worked better than phrase books. Next time, we decided, we’ll just take translating dictionaries and look up individual words. For example, in grocery stores, the most common word we needed was the word for bread. When we phrased it as a question, and added a smile, they always understood.

Whenever we didn’t understand prices, we would simply offer clerks a handful of money, let them take what they wanted and figure out later if it came out right. It always did. We used a phrase book only once, at the Hungarian truck stop. The goulash was so-so, but the company was fine. Hungarians were the friendliest people we met. For whatever reason, they seemed happier to meet Americans than other Europeans did.

Another piece of advice to potential RVers: Don’t expect to find ice. Europeans don’t believe in it. Our tiny RV freezer produced a small batch each day, but fresh water was a bigger problem. Wherever they go, RVs need to refill their tanks every few days.

In the States, you just hook up your hose to a tap at a campground or rest area, and in a few minutes you’re on your way. In Europe, few of the rest areas have water taps, and we were advised that the purity may be suspect. It took us about a week to figure out that the best plan was to fill our water tank whenever we refueled at a gas station every couple of days. Not all stations had water, but the green British Petroleums were usually a good bet.

Other RV renters advised us not to trust European tap water east of the Netherlands, so we needed bottled water as well. Good luck. We couldn’t even find Evian in Evian, the little French town on the south side of Lake Geneva where it’s bottled. They must ship every drop over here.

We kept getting steered to one-liter glass bottles that turned out to be seltzer, which can be used for brushing your teeth but makes lousy iced tea.

Propane, required for heat, cooking and the refrigerator, is a cinch to find in the U.S. but difficult in Europe. Fortunately, we had to refill only once and located a facility down an alley in Lausanne that swapped our two empty five-gallon tanks for full ones, which is standard practice.

Diesel fuel, on the other hand, was available at every station and, at about $2.75 a gallon, it cost about a third less than gasoline in all countries but Switzerland. We had heard horror stories about sky-high European fuel prices, but after factoring in the 20 miles per gallon our little RV was getting, we figured we were able to run the rental at roughly the same cost as our larger American RV gets, 7 or 8 miles per gallon at about $1.25 per gallon.

One other concern constantly on RVers’ minds is where to dump their waste water. Holding tanks hold only so much, but the Europeans have different solutions. “Gray,” or wash, water is simply run off into a street grate or convenient cow pasture. As for the “black” toilet water, most European RVs use Porta Potties, for which specially designed dump stations are provided at most campgrounds and some gas stations. Everybody carries his detachable Porta Pottie tank to the dump place. It was an interesting way to meet people.

It’s more trouble entering California through the bug stations than crossing most European frontiers. Although we were there before the official start-up of the European Community, the authorities seemed to be phasing in the elimination of border complications. Only once did we need to show our passports: entering Hungary, a non-EC country. A Dutch customs official winked and waved us through. A German border post was unmanned. Liechtenstein? Just a colorful little sign.

For drive-time entertainment the RV had a three-band radio, but we were disappointed in the BBC, after all the raves we had heard. We decided the first B stands not for British but Booooring .

Evening highlights, after the news, ran to half-hour discussions of flower growing and the implications of large companies managing their own employee cafeterias. One night, so help us, they even talked at length about how the BBC had become so boring. American Armed Forces Radio was much better, treating us to news, music and American football games.

But the best we found was the Blue Danube Network in Austria. Where else but in the land of Strauss and Mozart could you hear big-band music as you motored down the road, looking for a castle?

GUIDEBOOK: Renting an RV in Europe

Recreational vehicles in various sizes and price ranges may be rented in several European capitals, but Amsterdam and Frankfurt are good starting points because these cities are served from Los Angeles by most major airlines. Planning and reserving several months in advance is recommended. A word of caution: Some smaller RVs don’t have toilets and showers, and cab-over bunks on mid-size models may be cramped and unsuitable for two adults, so check details on equipment.

RV rental companies: We rented our RV through an Avis affiliate called Holland Motorhome (call 011-31-20-683-6061 in Amsterdam or 011-31-20-604-1301 at Schiphol Airport or Avis locally at 800-331-1084, ext. 7321). Good Sam Tours (800-933-9779) uses an outfit called German Motor Home Travel Inc. (213-318-9995). Hertz uses a London affiliate (011-44-81-679-1799), and the Auto Club of Southern California works through the German tour company DER (310-479- 4411). Or contact foreign tourism offices or your travel agent.

What it costs: Peak season, with the highest prices, is June through August. The mid-size Chausson we rented costs $955 per week in peak season, $735 in May or September, $618 the rest of the year, plus 18.5% tax. Our model had a five-speed stick shift, got about 20 miles per gallon and used diesel fuel, which ran about $2.75 per gallon last fall. Carefully check insurance options, which may be complicated. There is no problem taking an RV on ferries, car trains or across international borders, but insurance may not cover trips into certain countries.

What you’ll need: European RVs will probably be sparsely equipped with living essentials; sheets and towels are not usually included. Our RV had minimal kitchen utensils, but you may need to buy more after you take inventory. You will definitely need to buy soap, paper towels, grocery bags and other items after you arrive. Before leaving home, obtain all maps you can from foreign tourist offices of the countries you plan to visit, or from U.S. sources. Although license requirements differ in various countries, the Auto Club recommends that you obtain an international driver’s license if you are planning to drive in Europe. They can be obtained at any of the Auto Club’s 78 district offices for $10; you’ll also need passport-type photos.

Where to stay: Campground guides are available from foreign tourism offices. However, most are private and offer little advantage except perhaps a feeling of security, or as a base for parking and visiting a larger city by public transportation. Otherwise, ubiquitous roadside rest areas or unused parking lots are satisfactory for overnight stops.

General supplies: Diesel fuel is sold everywhere, but we found propane for cooking, heating and refrigeration was more difficult to find. Fresh water--for washing, but not for drinking--is usually found at service stations. Towns seem to have few water taps. Non-carbonated bottled drinking water is a hit-and-miss proposition, so stock up on it when you find it. Food can be purchased at the open public markets--where the selection of fresh fruits and vegetables is excellent--or in grocery stores. Many stores are closed on Saturday afternoon, all day Sunday and from noon to 2 or 3 p.m. daily.

Useful reading: We found “Travel Europe With Your Motor Home,” by Nancy and Ralph Rosenlund, to be a helpful guidebook geared to RVers (PresComm Media Inc./RV West, 4133 Mohr Ave., Suite I, Pleasanton, Calif. 94566, 510-426-3200).