Europe Is A Winter's Tale

By Nancy R. Gibbs

Stockholm is sunless for 17 hours a day in December, and London gets 15 days of rain. Greek villages hibernate for the winter, Loire valley inns close their shutters, and, but for the evergreens and skiers, the Black Forest is bare. Surely these are reasons enough for the traveler to stay away.

Not anymore. For many Americans, each summer holiday reaffirms that traveling during peak season is increasingly a flawed experience. Too often it means paying more and seeing less, fighting crowds and missing any sense of a country's way of life. Having sweltered through Athens in August and endured Britain's roads in July, tourists are finally realizing why the first mark of seasoned travelers is the season in which they travel.

An off-peak vacation is a fable of compromises and calculations. On the one hand, there are bargains everywhere: Pan Am has a $398 round trip to London; Alitalia offers five nights in Rome for $99. On average, hotel and air-travel prices can be as much as 30% lower off-season. The trade-off, of course, comes in weather that ranges from unpredictable to appalling. While some resort towns remain mild well into the fall, northern cities turn gray and damp, and a visit requires a victory of mind over weather. The great galleries and cathedrals are often hushed and wonderfully solitary, but walking between them can be discouraging on a drizzly afternoon. The secret, explains the experienced traveler, is to visit places that all but the rottenest weather cannot spoil.

Winter travelers also cheerfully trade economy for convenience, since hotel rooms are often cheaper, but they may be harder to find as well. In regions thick with monuments, such as France's Loire valley, many hoteliers close in the off-season because they work so hard during the peak. In Italy winter travelers may find themselves staying in smaller towns or private homes, at a vineyard, a farm, in flavorful places where the local economy survives without a constant stream of tour buses. For those seeking greater amenities, the grand hotels rarely shut and are more likely to have a room at a humane price.

In the less tourist-oriented countries of Eastern Europe, both the inconvenience and the rewards are magnified. Good food and decent hotels may require some luck and homework to find. But to many, all the inconveniences of time and place seem a small price to pay for the chance to wander through Prague's heart-stopping streets on a quiet afternoon or linger in Budapest's Hungarian National Museum without being jostled by the crowds.

In fact, it is precisely because so much of the tourist industry slows down during the winter that so many travelers are attracted to the off-season. The low season is a blessed chance to eavesdrop on real life in a spirit of calm and privacy. Even the cities lose their summer affectations. "People get a better feel for Parisian life," says Nicole Roques-Lagier, press attache for the Paris Tourist Office. "They see people going about their daily business, much more so than in the summer, when the French themselves are on vacation." It is easier to get a table in a restaurant, a seat at a spectacle or the attention of a salesperson on the Faubourg-St.-Honore.

For those in search of festivity, the off-season is one long calendar of celebrations. There are rituals of planting and harvesting, the autumn wine festivals in Burgundy, the pre-Lenten carnivals of Venice and Portugal, the Vienna winter balls. In most countries, while summer is reserved for rest and recreation, the main cultural and social season runs from fall to spring. Vienna's opera and symphony seasons open with daily performances in September and last until June, while La Scala in Milan runs from December through June. The London theater season offers some of its freshest performances and premieres in the fall and winter, as does the Paris Opera and Ballet.

The risks of the off-season occasionally yield an unexpected reward. Travelers are well advised to pack an umbrella and waterproof shoes -- but it may just turn out that they aren't needed after all. There are few pleasures greater than Indian summer in November or a pale, warm winter week after Christmas in which to savor the sights that in summer are all too often lost in the sun.

With reporting by Tala Skari/Paris, with other bureaus