Tomboy's suggestion about visiting the local tourism office is a great idea since they will save you the time and effort of stopping into every cute inn or pension hoping to find a room, but.... Speaking for myself, I guess I'm a bit anal. I'd prefer to have everything set up in advance. That way, I don't have to duck out of Neuschwanstein or Wieskirche early to make sure I get to the tourist office before they close. When we travel, we generally don't check into our hotel until early evening and spend our day sightseeing. Sometimes that isn't the best plan however.

If I might add an anecdote from my recently concluded trip through parts of Bavaria: I booked all my accomodations via the Internet long in advance of our trip. Carried a thick notebook of all my correspondence and e-mails. Backed-up all those e-mails by sending them too 3 major e-mail providers (Gmail.com, excite.com and hotmail.com) just in case something went wrong.

For the weekend just before New Years, I had booked a Zimmer Frei through the Berchtesgaden Tourist Office website. "Knowing" we had a confirmed reservation for this long weekend in a popular ski area, we spent the day exploring the Salzkammergut then sitting down to a great early dinner in Salzburg. At around 7:00 we arrived in Berchtesgaden and thanks to my GPS we soon found the little farm we were "booked" at. Long story short, the owner had no idea who we were didn't understand my printed confirmation and even though she tried to find a friend with rooms available, everyone was booked. My GPS directed us to the nearby tourist office. It was closed but a free computer with access only to the tourist office's booking service sat outside the office. We got on and soon found 5 places that were listed as being available. We stopped at 4 of them, but they were completely full.

We spent the next hour and a half looking for rooms. There are Pensions, Inns, Gasthofs, Hotels and Zimmer Freis EVERYWHERE you look in this area, but everyone we stopped into was full. We even inquired at a very expensive hotel which we knew would totally bust our budget, but no luck. We started to consider how we might spend the night in our spacious 9 psgr van. I decided to head North toward the Autobahn and maybe the farther we got from the ski slopes the better chance we'd have. I was half expecting to spend the night in Munich, almost 2 hours away. Fortunately, we missed a turn that the GPS wanted us to take. In making a U-turn we stumbled upon a big Gasthof just off the beaten path. Rooms were available but at three times the price I had expected. We were 40 minutes further away from where we wanted to be, but everything worked out. Nice warm cozy rooms, wonderful buffet breakfast and great views of the snow falling on the nearby Alps.

Ooops! I think I was trying to convince you to book in advance instead of playing it by ear? I suppose my point is that even the best laid plans go astray.