We haven’t done this one yet. We very much intend to.
An email arrives in October. Munich to Málaga, leaves Thursday, nine days, one euro a night. A four-berth van with a shower and a kitchen, two thousand kilometres of Europe in between, and a company that would genuinely rather you took it than left it standing.
We haven't done this one. We came across it while looking for something else entirely, sat and read the listings for far longer than we meant to, and came away thinking we'd very much like to. So this is written from the outside — but the arrangement is so straightforward, and the sums so plainly in your favour, that we wanted to put it in front of you while the season is coming round.
Rental vans don't come back on their own.
Everyone picks one up in the city and drops it at the coast. Everyone drives south in July and flies home in August. So the vans pile up at one end of every popular route, and every day they sit in the wrong car park they earn the company nothing.
The company can pay a driver and put them up in hotels. Or it can hand you the keys for a euro a night and let you enjoy yourself on the way. It would much rather do the second one.
There's a rhythm to it. In autumn the European fleets head south for the winter sun. In spring they all come back north.
Everything below is Europe. That is where the relocation routes are thickest, where the seasons push whole fleets north and south twice a year, and where you can check a fare yourself before you believe us.
The same arrangement runs in New Zealand, Australia and Canada, on the opposite calendar and over much longer distances — and that is a page of its own, coming later.
Germany down to Spain. The Netherlands to Portugal. Milan to the Adriatic.
Fifteen hundred kilometres, four or five days, and a vehicle that costs less for the week than a tank of diesel. The routes repeat every year, which means the one you missed this autumn will be back next autumn.
A four-berth van with a kitchen, a shower and a toilet. Usually under five years old, because the newest vans are the ones being shuffled between depots. Fully insured. The kind of thing that goes for well over a hundred euros a night in August.
Yours for about a euro.
And with it, the thing you don't get from a flight and a hotel: you stop where you like. A lake you saw from the road. A village with one restaurant. A car park above a bay where you make coffee at seven in the morning and nobody else is awake. The van makes the route the holiday instead of the bit before it.
The euro a night is real. It just isn't everything, and it's nicer to know that now than at a toll booth.
There's a booking fee, typically somewhere between twenty-five and a hundred euros depending on the deal and the operator. Then diesel, which on a long European leg is comfortably your biggest cost. Campsites run around twenty-five euros a night, less if you're happy with the simple ones, and nothing at all in the countries where a night in a lay-by is legal. Add ferries and tolls if your route needs them.
None of it is hidden — it's all on the listing before you book. Add it up and a week that would have cost well over fifteen hundred euros lands somewhere near a third of that, in a vehicle you'd never have paid full price for.
Look at an aggregator first, because it saves you checking eight sites in turn. Then, and this is the part that actually works, join the waiting lists. Tell them the route you want and the fortnight you could go, and let them come to you.
That's how people get the good ones. The best routes never sit on a page long enough to be found by browsing — they're offered to the list and taken the same day. It costs nothing to be on it, and the email that arrives in October saying Munich to Málaga, leaves Thursday, nine days is how most of these trips begin.
Be a little flexible and you'll be offered a great deal more. The whole arrangement exists because the company needs the van moved, so the flexibility is the currency you're paying with.
Because you end up somewhere you'd never have chosen.
Few of us would think to plan a week in Ljubljana. But the van needs to be in Ljubljana, so suddenly you have a reason to go — and it turns out to be one of the loveliest small cities in Europe.
That's the real offer here. Not the euro. The euro is what gets your attention. What you keep is a fortnight of waking up somewhere you couldn't have named a month earlier, with the coast on one side and no particular reason to hurry.
You've saved most of a week's rental. Spend a little of it at the ends, where the trip is otherwise just an airport.
Take a night before you collect it. Nobody wants to land and drive a strange six-metre van the same afternoon. → Find a hotel
Then stay on where you dropped it. A whole place with its own kitchen, for a week in the city you've just arrived in. → Find a house or apartment
Pick up a car for the days after. The van has gone back and the good bits are usually up a hill somewhere. → Compare car hire
Book the thing you'd normally talk yourself out of. You've saved a week's rental — spend a morning of it. → Find something to do
Come home the interesting way. A flight, an overnight train, a bus through somewhere you've never seen. You're not tied to the way you came. → Compare flights and trains
And read up before you go. A relocation can point you at any country on the map, so start where yours is still a surprise. → Find your destination
Here they all are, the small ones as well as the obvious ones.
Most listings are domestic, and in a country the size of Australia that's the whole point. The cross-border European runs are the prize, and they're seasonal — so get on the lists in late summer for the autumn, and again after Christmas for the spring.
None of this is a reason not to go. It's the difference between a trip that runs beautifully and one you spend arguing about at a service station.
So go and look — it takes three minutes, and the season is either just starting or just about to. Put your name on a waiting list while you're there. Somewhere out there is a van that has to be in Portugal by the end of the month, and no one to drive it.
If you book one of these, or try one, or talk yourself out of one — we would like to hear about it. Drop us a line.
— Birgitta & Anders
Some links here earn us a small commission. It never changes what we include — and when something is here for another reason, we say so.
One new way to travel. Every Thursday.
Not deals or destinations — methods. House sitting, night trains, repositioning cruises, and what each one really costs.
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