LAst summer my husband and I traveled to Rome, Florence, and Venice. We had an apartment in each place and it was wonderful. Has anyone every done that in Germany and can give advice?

Click on VRBO.com, then on your left you will see a list of countries, then click on Germany. City by city, you will see apartments listed.

I have home exchanged in Germany in Hamburg, the Black Forest, Berlin and Scheidigg (teeny town on the Austrian border in Allgau). I have never rented an apartment.

There is a guy, [email protected], who has a site with all sorts of information. If you email him, he will direct you to his site. He isn't selling anything--just helping people. He does know Bavaria and southern Germany.

Several years ago I rented a Berlin apartment through mitwohnzentrale (http://www.city-mitwohnzentrale.com/...tments-berlin/) and it was fine. I think they are an agency that handles short term rentals for a lot of private owners. There are not many listings on VRBO but a quick internet search for german vacation rentals returned a lot of hits.

Bavaria Ben's site, a good one!
http://www.bensbauernhof.com

Milliebest:
I have steyed in apartments many times in Germany--love the extra space, self-catering, and local neighborhoods.
Choose tht town (or state) that you wish to visit, then add .de for Germany, check the web for accomodations, like so:
www.gengenbach.de if there is no english translation for the site,
Unterkunft is Lodging,
Ferienwohnungen are Apartments,
Pensionen/Gasthaeuser are B&Bs....
usually there is an address for the tourist office attached...they can often intervene and help in english.
Many apartment listings have photos (if you can't speak German), with detailed descriptions and prices.
Be specific if you do this through the Tourist Office, ie: top price you're willing to pay, lakefront, quiet area, town centre, bottom floor, must have balcony, etc

OOPs! Hit send instead of preview!
Okay, so Gengenbach.de was not a good site to practice with....try www.bamberg.de it has an english version---search flats for what you like.
Do you have specific towns that you wish to visit?

We definitely will do Berlin. Probably, Cologne and Munich. We are retired so time is not a constrant. I have just begun my exploration into the possibilities in Germany.

We stayed in a wonderful apartment in Bavaria last year. I'm not sure where you will be, but our apartment was in the small town of Schonau, about 2 km from the Konigssee and about 20 minutes from Salzburg. The website for the apartment is only in German, but I use babelfish.altavista.com to translate it. The woman who owned it was delightful; she left fresh rolls on our doorstep each morning and even though she didn't speak a word of English she was such a pleasure to be around. The town of Schonau is very pleasant, and we walked to "town" each morning for chocolate croissants and the ATM.

http://www.hinterbrandner.de/
The woman owns both houses on the website, but we stayed in the smaller one, second picture down from the top. I believe we had the "Jenner" apartment, which had one bedroom, one bathroom, a small but very adequate kitchen, a nice living room, and a balcony that could be accessed from both the bedroom and the living room. Delightful! Best of all was the price; 35 euros per night!

By the way, we found this one on vacationapartments.com. They have quite a few German apartment rentals.

Tracy

Sorry...please not that it should be http://www.vacation-apartments.com/.

Tracy

USNR

VRBO was a great suggestion!!

Thanks

Betsy, thanks for posting BavariaBen's site. I just bought a new computer and lost a lot of data in the set up--including all my favorite places.

Ben is an American and really knows his stuff and loves helping people.

You are very welcome. I wouldn't think of going to Bavaria without using Ben's website!