Tips on Living in Europe for the Summer with Family

Sounds like a great plan! It can be quite fun to travel with teens and having a home base for longer periods of time can help not only to cut down on costs but also to get a chance to get to know a region a bit more deeply. I'd probably would not do 2 months in one place but have a series of home bases for about 2 weeks each to get the most of of this family time in Europe and cut down on transportation cost. We took our kids to Italy when they were in Jr High School and rented an appartment for a week in Tuscany. Worked out great as they could take their first hand knowledge and apply it at school when their Social Studies class covered the Renaissance. We stayed here: http://www.poderepoggetto.it/ However, you do need to be realistic. It would be pretty much impossible to find a place for a family of four to live here at home at $1000/month - and you'd need a furnished holiday rental with linens, kitchen utensils .... and all that in the middle of the high vacation season!!! A more realistic budget would be around $500/week. And that would be in more rural location and not in the big cities. Even in Switzerland you can find low priced accommodations if you are willing to explore areas such as Emmental and don't focus on the touristy Berner Oberland. We stayed here and had lots of fun:
www.kapfschwand.ch I'd recommend looking at websites such as this one to get a better idea on vacation rentals: www.interchalet.co.uk

"However, you do need to be realistic. It would be pretty much impossible to find a place for a family of four to live here at home at $1000/month - and you'd need a furnished holiday rental with linens, kitchen utensils .... and all that in the middle of the high vacation season!!!" In addition, you need to realistic about how accurately we can guess what apartment rents will be TEN YEARS from now! I would just get busy saving like crazy and keep tabs as the years go by on what apartment rents are running. Like any other costs, no one can accurately predict what you might or might not be able to find by that time.

Do you think you'd want to be paying a hotel in Paris and an apartment in Vienna at the same time. You would be paying double every time you take an overnight trip. Also, Austria is quite expensive. Using your example, Vienna to Paris is a long 12 hour drive if you keep the speed up on the autobahn. If not it can drag into two days. So that would be two long days on the road, or you split it up into three or four with stops to see other cities along the way, but you are paying rent back in Austria the whole time.

Look into Home Exchange and then maybe pick two or 3 different cities. This allows you to live much more cheaply and often the homes come with car, etc. and can be very nice. Switzerland is super expensive, as is Scandinavia, even for just basic food products, etc. Pick more central locations. The Frankfurt/Rhine Main area is a good one, due to the location smack dab in the middle of Germay and Europe and the transportation system lets you get everywhere cheaply and easily. Then pick somewhere in France, and then maybe something up in the Netherlands or Belgium. This is the only way you will get by on the budget you are suggesting. Add in 10 years for inflation too.

"Also, would it be possible to find a place to make home for 2 months at around $2000 total? $1000 a month." Almost certainly not, unless you go with the home exchange idea. Switzerland may appear centrally located on a map, but the mountains make transit through the country much slower than you might expect. If you would use Switzerland (and it would cost you far, far more than $1,000 per month), consider some of the regions with good transportation connections to the rest of Europe, like around Zurich or Basel.

Your major concern would be near a major transportation hub. Wien is not that good for that function. Instead of Switzerland, I'd consider Milano or München.

Brandon,, I don't know if this will work for you ,, but my thoughts are to go sooner rather then later. I speak from the experience of having spent months in Europe(France ) as a youngster(starting when I was about 8) to teen to adult. I have also taken two of kids to Europe, one when she was 11, and my oldest son when he was 14.
Younger kids actually adjust and assimalate ( think thats spelt wrong but you know what I mean) to new foods, culture and customs then teens. They don't mind leaving their friends as much as teens for longer periods because their family is still their main peer group, and its a good time to show them that there is a bigger world out there, so when they do become teens they have a better world view then their neighborhood and friends. Plus when they are younger you can fit two children on to a sofa bed,, getting cheaper accomadation that way, two teens are basically two adults, they eat like adults and need as much space as two adults. I think kids from 6-13 are great travellers too. Teen kids are often involved in sports or summer jobs too. Anyways , just a thought. If you can wing it,, don't wait.

Hey, Brandon - as some of the posters said, a lot can happen in ten years (trust James from Ansbach to set the cat among the pigeons once again!) I agree, you need to find a more central location than Vienna, unless you want to concentrate on Eastern European countries for your excursions. Also, eight weeks is not all that much to get to know a place, much less take lots of trips to other areas. You might explore farm stays - a lot of farms in Germany, Austria, Northern Italy have added vacation apartments to make ends meet, sometimes there's no farming going on at all, other times there are vineyards, apple orchards or livestock farming or horses. Here is a website for Northern Italy to start you off:
http://www.redrooster.it/en/. Similar websites exist for Germany and Austria; I think they have English versions. In general, public transportation, trains, buses are widespread in those countries so you can get around even if you don't rent a car. Here's a Swiss site. http://www.bauernhof-ferien.ch/englisch/. I'm not sure these farm vacation homes are necessarily cheaper than city apartments, though. As other posters said, $1000/month is not realistic, even now and who knows what will happen in ten years. Have you considered going earlier, maybe in two or three years? Children can often travel and live more cheaply than adults, and teenagers will be counted as adults. If you stick to ten years from now, you could all learn a foreign language, too, if you don't already know one.

Laughing at James's response, but he and Pat are right. My daughter is 14, and is starting to complain about going on trips (being away from friends, technology)- when they are young, they are more flexible, and so is their schedule (if you take a trip over a spring or other holiday break at a cheaper time to travel and miss a few days of school, it doesn't impact grades that go on college transcripts.) If you are passionate about doing something, do it now- life is short, people divorce, die, get sick, lose jobs, or otherwise change circumstances.

I would get an airline credit card now and start charging everything on it so you could have free tickets by the time you want to travel.
We took our kids to Germany for their first time abroad when they were elementary age and stayed in RS family rooms; those are great memories for them and us. They have traveled abroad in school trips as well, and know how to behave because they have traveled, they have seen the world through different lenses. Your kids will appreciate Europe now, and they will remember it.

Brandon, I totally agree about not waiting until your kids are teens. My 16 year old has been complaining for months about our 1 week trip this summer. This is the shortest vacation we have taken in years! I left him with grandma when we went away for Fall Break which was only a week too. My kids were 11 and 4 1/2 the first time they went to Europe. We have only gone twice and are planning trips 3 and 4 for 2013 and 2014. Gotta have a hobby! If you think about traveling as a family it will change a bit how you do things but I think being less ambitious and being able to make more than one trip that lasts the summer is well worth it. If you plan 2 week trips every 3 years or so you will give your family something to look forward to and your kids will grow up with a wonderful sense of the world. Picking 2 home bases where you can rent a house/apartment works well for us. We do big city, countryside (England it was London and the Cotswolds). This past summer in France we rented a 3 bedroom gite in Brittany and it cost $760 for the week and our 2 bedroom apartment in Paris was $1604. That will give you an example of rental costs. It takes a lot of research and saving pennies (literally for us) but the payoff is well worth it. Good luck in your future travels.

Brandon: If you took 2 kids to Europe right now, you'd feel like you were a banker. Europeans don't think a thing about spending E50 per night on dinner. Unless you're careful, cash spent can get away from you; and, that's now. Europeans spend cash like it's going out of style because most of them don't have our big houses, a boat on Percy Priest Lake and two or three cars. A 10 year saving project would be tough to do. And, who knows what inflation we have in our futures. But, you're right about finding a central location to do long weekend trips out of. Tuscany would be a good place to get a villa. Salzburg would be a good place to stay. The Dutch countryside would be a good place to do day trips from. And, there are many other places that would be good.

Dear David: do you know a lot of "Europeans" personally, to make such a broad, sweeping statement about what kind of possesions they own and how much money they spend when going out? You have also included an entire continent in your statement, which shows you probably don't know what you are talking about at all. Do you really think Swedes are like the Portugese, or that the Italians are like the Germans? Add in the fact that ALL people are individuals and your statment becomes even more ludicrous.

David (Florence) says ".... most of them don't have our big houses, a boat on Lake Percy Priest and two or three cars." Neither do most Americans.

Someone could get this impression if they follow the guidebooks closely because where do the books steer people, into the very wealthy neighborhoods, such as rue Cler, or Ile St. Louis, or the Marais, or the 5th or the 6th. For the most part, these neighborhoods cater to the extremely wealthy. If you hung out in Beverly Hills or the Upper East Side, or parts of Boston, or the Chicago Gold Coast, you'd get the same impression. Instead, take the Paris metro to the end of the line, any line and walk around. Go into the Paris suburbs or villages, except the wealthy ones in the guidebooks which you find in Provence or on the Riviera. Instead of going to Monaco, go to the villages in the back country where the Monaco maids and policemen live. Go through the back door for real. You'll see that most people are struggling just as they are struggling in Indiana, in Alabama, and in every other state.

David claimed: Europeans spend cash like it's going out of style and just where do you get that statistic? None of the people I know, or most of the people I serve, do that. €50 for a meal? I've never done it, my wife and I usually spend around €12 or £10 each for a dinner, half that for a lunch. And 90-95% of our meals are at home - we very rarely go out. We can't afford it. The reason they (we) don't have big houses is we can't afford them. I just spent over half a month's take home pay insuring a 9 year old car. Rubbish - total rubbish.

luckily you have lots of time to think about your plan as some mentioned you might look at doing home swaps for cheaper lodging
if you have a home base and travel you will be paying twice for lodging. I'd prefer to move locations after a week or so to see more of Europe but still not at a rushed pace. Vienna and Switzerland are not cheap options. You also need to think about transportation hubs.

Perhaps David just meant that they don't charge everything with their AmEx and pay cash instead :-P I gotta add to the "don't wait until they're in high school" argument. My 12yo is more difficult to travel with these days than when she was younger. Sleep, comfort food, and her iPod are gaining importance over new and different experiences and just spending a lot of time with her parents/family. (But we don't tolerate it...much ;) In today's economy (and who knows about the future), I think $1000/month is unrealistic. You'll need a furnished, short-term vacation rental and you just don't find much in a good location that costs less than even 500€/week - especially if you're looking at prime tourist season. I'd also suggest separate 1 week rentals. You'll save a lot of transportation costs if you aren't going round trip everywhere and just move from city to city.