"You make it seem like your life is SO wonderful ALL the time. You need to reveal the real parts of your life too - like doing laundry and sitting at home watching TV and having your car break down."
While I won't bore you with details about
laundry (we don't have a machine in our building so we must schlep our bags two blocks to do the deed),
laundry (we don't have a machine in our building so we must schlep our bags two blocks to do the deed),
sitting at home watching TV (I have a real weakness for Married to Jonas), and
having our car break down (our 2nd clutch is on its last legs - oh San Francisco hills...),
I will tell you a story that is not nearly as glamorous as the globe-trotting posts of late.
Have you heard of air bnb?
Similar to VRBO, it allows people to rent out their home or apartment. Air bnb, however, specializes in smaller chunks of time so you can have people stay (or rent out their place) for only a few days. It's super easy to sign up (you just post some pictures and a description of your apartment) and then you get decide when and for what price and to whom you rent your space out.
Seemed easy enough.
Seemed easy enough.
Stefan was skeptical (he didn't like the idea of someone else sleeping in our bed - different sheets or not), but I convinced him that given that we'd be gone for such a long chunk of time while in Germany and Switzerland, it was worth a shot. Especially since San Francisco prices could allow us to collect a nice thousand or so dollars while we were away. I assured him everything would go off without a hitch and agreed to be in charge of the whole thing.
I took some jazzy photos of our place and posted them along with the dates of when we'd be gone.
I took some jazzy photos of our place and posted them along with the dates of when we'd be gone.
do you like my little mock wine and cheese set up?
(that bread is a week old)
it's ALL about the details
It didn't take long for me to get a plethora of reservation requests. Each one came with information about that person's favorite hobbies, references for me to check them out, and links to their website or blog. (Because everyone has a blog these days.)
After some serious due diligence, I settled on a gentleman who planned to have two sets of guests stay in the place: for the first few days - "The Colleagues", and then for the last few days - "The Parents". He seemed nice, responsible, and all his references gave him glowing reviews - how bad could his colleagues and parents be?
We have a code to get into the front of our building, so I sent that along as well as details on how to get into the key box I left hanging on the door. I left clear instructions on how to access our wifi, where to take out the trash, and where to leave the keys when they left (in the key box!). Plan was to have Oscar (our cleaner) come into between the two sets of guests to clean the apartment, change the sheets, and get everything all set for "The Parents" to arrive.
Seemed easy enough.
But around 10pm Germany time on this day:
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I got a call from Oscar:
"KK - I see no key."
In my broken Spanish (and his broken English), we came to the conclusion that the key box was nowhere to be found. I quickly placed a call to "The Colleagues" to check in.
"We took the key with us," they said matter-of-factly.
"You TOOK the key WITH you??????" I blared into the phone.
I was irate.
After some minutes ofdiscussion extreme argument, he admitted his wrongdoing and agreed to do whatever it took to rectify the situation. Given that he was still at the airport, Tobias (our host) had the idea to have him pay a taxi driver to drive the key to our apartment (where Oscar was waiting). We had him tell us the taxi driver's cab number and phone number and then we called him to confirm he knew where he was going / was on his way.
Seemed easy enough.
Except for after 1 hour, the taxi driver still had not arrived. (And our apartment is a 30 minute drive from the airport.) Tobias kindly explained that he likely just stopped to make a copy of the key for future use. Ha. Ha.
Eventually he did arrive and he did give the key to Oscar and the rest of the week went off without a hitch. But I spent quite some time wondering if I'd return to an apartment that had been completely cleaned out.
Luckily, it was still intact when I returned home, but I'm still debating about changing the locks - would you?
Have you ever tried air bnb? Any horror stories?
xoxo
KK
After some serious due diligence, I settled on a gentleman who planned to have two sets of guests stay in the place: for the first few days - "The Colleagues", and then for the last few days - "The Parents". He seemed nice, responsible, and all his references gave him glowing reviews - how bad could his colleagues and parents be?
We have a code to get into the front of our building, so I sent that along as well as details on how to get into the key box I left hanging on the door. I left clear instructions on how to access our wifi, where to take out the trash, and where to leave the keys when they left (in the key box!). Plan was to have Oscar (our cleaner) come into between the two sets of guests to clean the apartment, change the sheets, and get everything all set for "The Parents" to arrive.
Seemed easy enough.
But around 10pm Germany time on this day:
.JPG)
(post numerous wine tastes, 1 beer, and 2 glasses of wine at dinner)
I got a call from Oscar:
"KK - I see no key."
In my broken Spanish (and his broken English), we came to the conclusion that the key box was nowhere to be found. I quickly placed a call to "The Colleagues" to check in.
"We took the key with us," they said matter-of-factly.
"You TOOK the key WITH you??????" I blared into the phone.
I was irate.
After some minutes of
Seemed easy enough.
Except for after 1 hour, the taxi driver still had not arrived. (And our apartment is a 30 minute drive from the airport.) Tobias kindly explained that he likely just stopped to make a copy of the key for future use. Ha. Ha.
Eventually he did arrive and he did give the key to Oscar and the rest of the week went off without a hitch. But I spent quite some time wondering if I'd return to an apartment that had been completely cleaned out.
Luckily, it was still intact when I returned home, but I'm still debating about changing the locks - would you?
Have you ever tried air bnb? Any horror stories?
xoxo
KK
Yes I've had two good, one fine, and one horrid experience on Airbnb and I've sworn off the service. Quite sad really, as I think it's a good concept, but way too much can go wrong, as you experienced! Hope you had a great time in Germany and Switzerland!
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