Travel Tips for Guest Houses in this Region

This is my first attempt at writing something approaching a travel tip, so bear with me.  Over the last 3 weeks of biking through Northern Switzerland and Southern Germany, there's a few items I've learned that I wish I would've known previously.  So, here's hoping the next intrepid traveller can get his hands on this knowledge before heading over here.

The best prices for overnight accomdations seems to be the "Gasthaus" (guest house) rather than the normal hotel.  Typical prices range between 25-40 Euros for a single room at a nicely appointed place (similar to low-end B&B's in the US), with the cheaper ones being the more rural spots.

Most of the smaller guest houses here are run by a single or perhaps a couple of people (usually a family).  Sometimes there'll just be a handful of rooms which are mostly empty in the off-season and mostly full in the high season.  Because of this, there's a definite schedule to the day when they do their various chores: Morning until 10 is taking care of everyone's breakfast and settling up bills.  After that, until around 4 or 5 is cleaning up the rooms and prepping for dinner.  5 to 7 is usually when they will actually man some kind of reception desk and after 7 is reserved for them putting together and serving dinner for everybody.

So, if you're someone like me, who trundles casually into a town and knocks on a door randomly at 11 AM and asks to be shown to a room, don't be surprised when you're met with a mild annoyance.  Don't get me wrong: they are professional and courteous, but you've just thrown them a bit off their schedule and you'll get very rushed service.

After a couple of weeks, I finally picked up on the rhythm of the day, and have found things to go much smoother.  My days are planned around me arriving in my destination no earlier than 4 PM and no later than 6:30 PM, which means that all of the reception areas are staffed properly and all of the folks I meet are more or less ready to accomdate the dirt-encrusted bicycle tourist.

Of course, for the larger hotels, this schedule means nothing: most of them have staffed reception areas 24 hours a day, always ready to help out.