Bavarian farm holiday?

Hi Julie, This may be of interest to you. We've stayed at the Pension Mayringerlehen in Ramsau bei Berchtesgaden 3 times (10/06, 10/07 and 9/09) and simply love it here. They have an orgainic dairy farm and have cows, goats, chickens, guinea pigs, rabbits, a horse and a llama. The owners, Sabine and Johann Grassl, are just the nicest people you could meet. The rooms are nice, the views terrific, breakfast buffet (inc. in the room price) very good and very central/convenient to many sights such as Berchtesgaden, Konigsee, Jennerbahn cable car, Eagle's Nest, Salzburg, Salt Mine tours, Sommerrodelbahn (luge ride) by Hallein, etc. http://www.mayringerlehen.de If interested, we have some photo's at: http://www.worldisround.com/articles/355548/index.html http://www.worldisround.com/articles/338872/index.html http://www.worldisround.com/articles/324607/index.html There are a number of reviews on T/A: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g635853-d630183-Reviews-Mayringerlehen-Ramsau_Berchtesgadener_Land_Bavaria.html Paul

Of course farmers will hardly speak and other language then their own, native one. In Bavaria that means Bavarian, not even proper German. Here are a few resources: Farm holidays Germany This one is specialized on Bavaria This one includes Austria and a few other countries as well

To further comment on what Andreas said - My U.S. family and my German family spent some time at a farmhouse in the Black Forest. My relatives live in Northern Germany. My aunt said she had a hard time understanding the farmer, and mentioned he had a Southern accent. To clarify, my aunt is not an American living in Germany, she is a native German. The farmer spoke no English.

My only experience to date wasn't a very good one. We stayed at Gasthof zum Schluxen in Reute. It billed itself as a working farm; I thought it would be a treat for my daughter. The hotel itself is great but it's not a farm in any real sense. There are reindeer across the street but the manager got nervous if my kids even approached the few chicken coops on the property.

Bavaria Ben's non-commercial pages do a great job of describing farm-stays in Germany with lots of photos and personal input in English from those who have tried them; there are links to farm-stay websites AND to individual farms in Bavaria, the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) the Odenwald and Neckar Valley, and in Austria as well: http://www.bensbauernhof.com/farms.html

Thank you! We will check them out and keep it a consideration. I am not too concerned about language issues. We've travelled quite a bit and have had issues with language barriers(especially when we went to Russia which was just so foreign to us) and we seem to survive! It's part of the fun (as long as the people on the other end feel the same!!)

The farm stay adverts for Swiss vacations indicated which languages were spoken. I stayed in a farm near Lake Konstance and the lady of the house spoke English. It was probably the best four days of our vacation that year.

I agree with Russ about Bavaria Ben's website. It was the inspiration for my last trip. Plenty of interesting trip reports - the latest 2 are from Russ and me.

We stayed on a farm in Slovenia and the farmer spoke no English. Didn't matter. My kids managed to figure out how to feed the pigs every morning and we had a great time. Go for it!