Craigslist alternatives for Europe?

April 13, 2008 10:48 PM

Craigslist alternatives for Europe?

Hi, I plan on moving to Europe in the summer and I'm wonder what Craigslist-like sites are good for finding sublets and room/temporary rentals (I'd prefer to avoid hostels/hotels) across Europe? I know of gumtree.com for London, but would like to find equivalents for the rest of Europe. And yes, I know that craigslist has a lot of European locations but, save for a few metropolises, most are pretty bare.

English friendly sites preferred (my English and Polish are pretty weak).

Similarly, are there other couchsurfing-like sites around?

posted by mkn to travel & transportation (11 comments total)

There is kijiji.de for germany, an active craigslist clone, but it is mainly in German.
posted by chillmost at 11:27 PM on April 13, 2008

Also, there is Craiglist in the bigger european cities. Check the main site for all the available countries.
posted by victorashul at 11:55 PM on April 13, 2008

Craigslist is the place if you want to find US ex-pats - there's a tremendous number of cities now covered.

Gumtree is one used by people in the UK and some parts of Europe - it has more of an Australasian feel but is arguably more busy than Craigslist.
posted by skylar at 12:14 AM on April 14, 2008

Note that kijiji is not very active in many cities. (I've bought computer equipment off of the Munich branch, but as housing goes, it's pretty barren.) Craigslist is, as you've seen, even more hopeless.

In Germany, you might want to look for a Zwischenmiete or v. short rental on wg-gesucht.de or studenten-wg.de. They're some of the biggest websites for rooms in WGs (Wohngemeinschafts, groups of youngish people living together) in Germany. The sites are primarily in German, but if you can figure out the basic info (price, location, dates) yourself, there's a pretty good chance the people you're emailing will speak English.
posted by ubersturm at 5:34 AM on April 14, 2008

SegundaMano in Spain para su casa de campo!
posted by JJ86 at 5:58 AM on April 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Gumtree for the UK, and blocket for Sweden.
posted by beerbajay at 6:23 AM on April 14, 2008

For the Netherlands (also has other stuff for sale, though not so English-friendly):
www.markplaats.nl

For Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, etc:
www.expatica.com
posted by mateuslee at 6:25 AM on April 14, 2008

For austria, check out http://www.jobwohnen.at/ .
posted by syzygy at 9:09 AM on April 14, 2008

Toytown Germany is an english-speaking expat community site. This thread on "Room and apartment rental websites in Germany" might interest you. You could also ask in the forums for specific cities/regions, they're usually very helpful.

If you speak a little bit of German, I would recommend "WG-Gesucht". As ubersturm mentioned, it's in German, but most people will understand you if you email them in English.
posted by The Toad at 10:07 AM on April 14, 2008

There are a couple of very active English-language expat forums in Switzerland, both of which have housing ads. glocals (formerly Geneva Online) is rather Geneva-centric as the name implies. This is their housing board. English Forum is sort of Zürich-centric. Posts tagged with 'apartment'. Both can also be jumping off points for finding friends and so on- GOL in particular was founded as a way for expats to find ways to party together. Beware, both forums, especially English Forum, have a small but noisy group of extremely negative people who hate everything and anything about Switzerland who will have you believe it's the worst place on earth.)
posted by thread_makimaki at 12:42 PM on April 14, 2008

seconding gumtree for the UK.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 2:34 PM on April 14, 2008