The Short-Term Rental Strategy

When my husband, GJ, and I were younger and fearful that each trip might be our last, we planned restless journeys that kept us moving through Europe at a pace that astonishes us now. For weeks on end, we lived out of suitcases hauled up and down the narrow staircases or the tiny slow elevators of countless--and now mainly forgotten--budget hotels. Occasionally we rooted for two days here or three there, but the mobility of a rented automobile inspired us to push ever onward, our trips increasingly a series of one-night stands.

While I would not trade that breadth of experience for anything, we approach our travels differently now as befits our middle age and frequently aching limbs. We have become enthusiastic converts to apartment renting, eschewing hotels wherever possible for a nest, albeit a temporary one, of our own.

Whether anchoring long journeys around a series of rentals or choosing an apartment rather than a hotel for a week’s stay in a European capital, GJ and I have grown to depend upon this mode of travel because it makes good sense for a couple of college professors, who rarely travel without a bag of books, laptop and next semester’s lesson plans. At the very least, we gain space and save money.

But the intangible rewards are the most compelling: staying for a week or two at a time offers us a chance to get attuned to the local rhythms of life. We seem to pay closer attention to our surroundings and not just to the sights. Best of all, we have fun pretending we are no longer merely tourists but residents, an illusion easy to sustain through daily stops at the butcher’s and baker’s and through instructive and frequently amusing conversations with our landlords.

Finding and booking European rentals requires patience because the process can take months. Once we decide on a basic itinerary, we gather rental information from various sources, starting with the relevant national tourist offices in the States. If a call yields no specific holiday accommodations brochure for the town or region we wish to visit, we write the local tourist office directly, obtaining the address either from the U.S. office or from a guidebook. The Michelin Red Guides are reliable sources.

Many of the booklets we receive from local European tourist offices, especially from the German-speaking countries, include photos and detailed information about holiday apartments. We look over the options, then select two or three based on their location, size and price. Then we write or, increasingly, fax their owners--in English, usually, except when GJ can use his German. We always propose dates in our initial contact because regular clients tend to reserve apartments well ahead. When corresponding by mail, we include an international reply coupon (available at the post office) with our inquiry, both as a courtesy and to inspire a quick response.

Almost all our apartment stays in Europe have been in private homes whose owners have converted a few spare rooms or an entire floor into an extra-income-producing holiday rental. Pride of property has been evident in the standards of cleanliness, which are generally outstanding. They tend, also, to be simply furnished and rather homey. Invariably, our German, Austrian, French, Portuguese, English, Swiss and Italian landlords have been welcoming and helpful folks who enjoy their interaction with visitors. Our journeys have been immeasurably enriched by these short-term relationships.

*

Last summer’s apartments were fairly typical of the many we have occupied over the past five years: clean and comfortable and run by pleasant, helpful hosts. Over a period of six weeks, we stayed in three different apartments in small towns in Austria and Germany. In between, we traveled to Budapest, Brno, Prague and Krakow, putting up at more costly hotels. We covered more than 2,000 miles introducing ourselves to those old capitals of the east, where we rigorously applied ourselves to sightseeing, grappled with unfamiliar languages, and oversampled the goulash and pilsener.

But we had, as well, the pleasure of looking forward to our next little home, where we might attend to the laundry, write, read, rest, digest what we had seen and experienced and eaten, and narrow our scope of exploration.

The first was in Seefeld, in the heart of the Austrian Tirol. Haus Steinroschen (literally, little stone rose) was chalet-style picturesque, its balconies bright with red geraniums. Its owner, Erika Friesser, a woman whose verve and gaily eccentric purple eyeglasses belied her status as grandmother, greeted us warmly, peppering her German with a few words of English for my benefit.

Clean and tastefully furnished in rustic Alpine style, with wood paneling and gingham curtains, the apartment proved a charming home for the next week. The beds were excellent, their firm mattresses covered by oversized goose down pillows and duvets encased in crisp white linens. Erika Friesser offered to supply us with rolls, fresh from the baker’s delivery van that made its rounds in the neighborhood, and so each morning we found our standing order for poppy seed and whole grain rolls in a cloth sack hanging from our doorknob.

She also supplied us with tips on local events she thought we should know about, such as the annual Church Day festival scheduled for the day after our arrival. We would have missed the solemn early morning procession through town had she not alerted us. Frau Friesser also offered advice on the town’s hiking trails (we wanted the gentlest) and talked soccer with GJ (the European Cup was in progress).

Our second apartment was equally satisfying. Since our research turned up little in the way of affordable short-term rentals in the heart of Vienna, where we intended to stay for nine days, we wrote to the tourist offices of several towns ringing the city hoping to find less expensive but still convenient accommodations--and we did. We corresponded with the Jagers (pronounced Yeager) of Klosterneuburg, a well-to-do wine-growing community along the Danube about six miles north of Vienna. The Jagers own the Haus Andrea, named after one of their four daughters who resides in the building and looks after its tenants. Andrea, however, is aided by the rest of the family, who live only a few doors away and who treat the apartment house as an extension of their own home.

GJ and I felt more like guests than tenants, the Jagers extending every kindness to us, from taking our packages and letters to the local post office to instructing us on the public transportation system. Ingeborg Jager and I even practiced our language skills on one another: I speaking my rudimentary German to her and she her more polished English to me.

Our second-floor apartment was smaller than our Seefeld rental, having only a sleeping alcove with twin beds off the living room. It was private enough, but dimly lighted. However, the well-equipped and pretty galley kitchen more than made up for the sleeping arrangements. Its large windowsill full of plants, overlooked Ingeborg Jager’s courtyard garden, which was in full July bloom and sent a fresh, delicate fragrance upward and into the kitchen.

*

Our last apartment of this trip was in Bad Hersfeld, Germany, in the region of Hesse. Towns in Germany and Austria that carry the prefix Bad (meaning bath,) tend to be pleasant places to stay for a week or more, having extensive parks for strolling, daily concerts, reading rooms amply supplied with newspapers and plenty of coffeehouses and pastry shops in which to idle.

We secured a roomy, inexpensive apartment from Wilhelm and Erika Bolender, a retired couple who speak no English. Needless to say, my German improved over the course of this trip. But of our three apartments, our Bad Hersfeld accommodation was the least attractive and its location also proved a drawback. The map of Bad Hersfeld had been so misleading that the apartment we thought was merely a healthy walk from the center of town turned out to be nearly three miles away. Our new residential neighborhood was uninteresting, and our daily walks to the local market produced only fairly reluctant greetings from the few neighbors we encountered.

However, the Bolenders more than made up for the reserve of their neighbors. They were perhaps a little too present during our stay, although very kind. An avid gardener--Wilhelm Bolender daily watered, weeded or fertilized the plant life ringing our many-windowed ground floor flat. And while I enjoyed learning from him the German names of several common plants and bushes, I did not always welcome his sudden appearance around the sunny patio where in the late afternoons I settled in to read, write, daydream or set out a few hand washables to dry. One evening, though, he spotted me through the kitchen window making a salad, and a moment later returned with a contribution of fresh chives, chervil and basil from his garden. And Erika Bolender knocked on our door one morning to present us with a fragrant, still-warm and delicious chunk of zucchini bread. She wrote out the recipe for me.

*

This was by no means the only occasion over the years on which we have been presented with such treats. We often find a bottle of local wine awaiting us in our rented apartments, sometimes accompanied by a handwritten greeting. But once, in the pretty German town of Bad Krozingen, we found in our new home not wine, but a bowlful of big black cherries, freshly picked from the orchard in the backyard and each as perfect a specimen as I have ever tasted. Every few days our landlord, Herr Neymeyer, would set a small basket of them outside our door, and we greedily gobbled them up.

Across the Rhine, in Alsace, we once stayed in a gite (the French term for a rural holiday property) in the tiny farming village of Ebersheim. Next to a bottle of the local Riesling was an entire Kugelhupf, the raisin-studded yeast cake typical of the region. Our landlord, an energetic and enterprising fellow named Francis, beamed over our exclamations and thanks.

Like Wilhelm Bolender of Bad Hersfeld, Francis was one of those property owners who loved to chat given the least opportunity. We learned a lot about the village from him.

One evening, we heard a clank against our second floor apartment balcony.

“Do not worry, Madame,” Francis called in. “It is not a robber. I am cutting the flowers.”

It was 8 in the evening, and there he was, up on a ladder weeding the window box geraniums. GJ and I put away our books and chatted--in an amalgam of English, French and German--while he worked.

Apartment renting has reinforced what GJ and I were only slowly learning during our early travels: that people are the most interesting aspects of a place. So eager to see sights, we often remained a fast-moving but isolated twosome, earnestly clutching our Michelin Green Guides and hardly trading a word with any but other American tourists waiting in line at the Prado or Louvre or Uffizi. We travel differently now, and if our little apartments have occasionally disappointed us, our landlords never have.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

GUIDEBOOK: Apartments in Europe

Getting there: Delta, Swissair, Lufthansa, United, British Air, Air France, KLM and Northwest fly, with one change of planes, between LAX and Vienna. Advance-purchase, round-trip fares start at $575.

Where to stay: Bad Hersfeld, Germany. Wilhelm Bolender, Monchesweg 23, 36251 Bad Hersfeld; from the United States telephone 011-49-6621-73443, fax 011-49-6621-14109. Rates: About $44 per day, plus an additional $20 for end cleaning. The Bolenders rent only to nonsmokers.

Bad Krozingen, Germany. Neymeyer Family, Staufenerstrasse 7, 7812 Bad Krozingen; tel. 011-49-7633-3425. Rates: About $35 per day for two.

Seefeld, Austria. Erika Friesser, Haus Steinroschen, Kirchwald 320, 6100 Seefeld; tel. 011-43-5212-3393. Rates: About $50 per day, and an additional $35 for cleaning. Charges vary according to season and to number of persons occupying the flat. Seefeld charges a guest tax (called Kurtaxe) of about $1.50 per day.

Ebersheim, France. Gite owned by Francis Rohmer located in the village center. Book through Bas-Rhin Loisirs Accueil, 7 place des Meuniers, 6700 Strasbourg; tel. 011-33-3-8875-5650. Rates: About $300 per week in June; $370 in July and August.

Klosterneuburg, Austria. Jager Family, Haus Andrea, Medekstrasse 15, 3400 Klosterneuburg; tel. 011-43-2243-25022. Rates: About $60 per day.

For more information: Austrian National Tourist Office, P.O. Box 491938, Los Angeles, CA 90049; tel. (310) 478-8306.