They’re what’s available in our pad. I used one of them once, then decided to get a cheap ceramic pan instead.
My spiffy new pan, tho 
Works bootifully.
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Is that a non-stick coating I spy peeling on the pan that came with the rental property? Hard no in that case.
Good choice to get that ceramic pan.
Some renters are brutal on kitchen stuff. At vacation properties where we have been repeat renters, I have observed non-stick cookware that’s new one season become a scratched, peeling mess by the next. Ugh.
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Only as long as it took to get replacements. OR, if you recently burned something in them, I’d toss them this instant.
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Ug. That’s why I travel with a couple of pans (I know, not really practicable for air travel).
Any chance the owner will help you out?
When we were staying at a VRBO for a couple of weeks, I texted the owner about the condition the pans were in as soon as we got there Saturday afternoon. She had a new 10-piece set of nonstick (cheap, but new and definitely serviceable) to me via Amazon on Monday morning.
Also a broom and dustpan because this was oceanfront with lots of sand to track in and apparently the cleaning service had accidentally locked up “renter-usable” stuff in their own special closet.
I was pretty grateful and fixed up a bunch of stuff in the house that she wasn’t aware needed fixing (with her permission, of course).
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Big ol’ Nope-arino on the original pans, yes to the new one!
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^ Same, when we’re driving. Better, easier meals and I am happier.
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Yeah I also when driving take a cutting board (why do rentals always have glass cutting boards?) and a couple of good knives (why do rentals always have serrated knives?).
Edit - I guess I know the reasons. Maybe if I owned a rental I’d have a couple of sets of cheap serrated knives, too. But no glass cutting boards. Ever. I swear.
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I am currently composing an email to him. I don’t want it to sound like we’re complaining, but we also don’t want to be blamed for their abhorrent state.
I’ll even offer to leave the new pan in his pad, as I am mos def NOT taking a frying pan back home 
Dang. I’d have gone out and bought a pan, too.
I wonder if all rentals are equipped with nonstick these days. I guess the other side of the coin would be burnt on destruction of regular pans, since apparently a lot of people don’t know how to use them anymore.
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Oh, we’ve seen it all in 2 decades of renting pads in Berlin. That’s why I always bring:
- my global
- the peeler I inherited from my mom when I moved out about 30 years ago, and it wasn’t new then*
- my garlic press
I also keep a salad spinner in Berlin with a friend bc I cannot live without salad, and it’s therefore a kitchen essential to me.
You’d be surprised how many Berlin pads don’t have shower curtains, or curtains in the bedroom.
WTAF?
Silly me saw a peeler very similar to the one I have, and I thought I could use an upgrade.
Wouldn’t ya know… the new one sucks. The old one still peels better 
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That’s weird about the peeler. Maybe you just got a poorly sharpened one - they look the same to me. Shower curtains I don’t get - unless the shower is handheld and you can sit in the bathtub while using it. I say this because my grandmother had an old fashioned claw-foot bathtub and we attached a rubber hose with a shower head on it to the faucet - but that shower head was for rinsing your hair; there was no wall to hook it on to take a shower. And no tile in the bathroom, either.
As for no curtains on the bedroom windows - modesty aside - I guess you get up with the sun whether you like it or not.
When we did a chaperoned school trip to various cities in Italy, one of the places I stayed in was a short term rental owned by a hotel in Rome. It also did not have a shower curtain for its free standing tub (with hand held spray). Come to think of it, the stand alone bathtub with hand held spray in the flat I rented in London (Golder’s Green) didn’t have one either. Is your tub equipped with a wall spray or hand held? I didn’t really think much about it at the time, but now I’m wondering if that’s just how it is for the hand held? Also, for landlords, I’d imagine keeping shower curtains mildew free and overall in good shape may just be a pain?
The London flat tub required us to put a 50p piece in to get hot water!
Side note - am I the only person who doesn’t think it is weird when windows that open to the outside don’t have screens? We have lots of mosquitos and other flying pests in New England, so I just took screens for granted. Apparently this is not as common in other places I’ve traveled to (which, tbf, are not that many (London, Edinburg, San Diego, parts of Italy) but still…).
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Maybe? They’re def the same kind of peeler, but I’ll stick to my “vintage” one and leave the new one at the pad here.
Our current pad has a tub with a solid shower ‘door,’ but we’ve seen many without. I don’t care to sit down to shower, so it’s often one of many criteria for picking a place – as are bedroom curtains bc neither of us care to be woken at 4am or even earlier. That’s also why we use sleep masks & a white noise app to drown out all the happy birdies celebrating a new morn… every morn 
@amandarama: when I went to London with a buddy straight outta HS & we stayed at a B&B, the tub had a faucet and a watering can. We basically had to fill it up and water ourselves like the English roses we were 
Screens are decidedly not a thing in Germany, either. We constantly have dumb bugs fly into our living and bed rooms 
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I’ve rented 2-3 VRBO/ABnB houses a year for at least the last 20 years. Often the owners hadn’t been there in a year and were relying on their housekeeping service to keep them informed, and I guess that doesn’t happen much.
Also for these 1-2 week vacation rentals (which would differ from your longer stay place, I’d think), the owners seem surprised that we want to cook a lot of our meals. I guess the average renter thinks, “I’m on vacation so let’s eat Cheerios for breakfast and dine out the other 2 meals every day”. Or eat out for all 3 meals. We generally do 1 per day out.
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^ Again, same.
It’s as if there is a checklist of suggested kitchen items for vacation rentals. Hmm, maybe there is? As in, stuff that is cheap to replace if renters destroy it.
We were lucky to rent from great people for an annual beach vacation for 20 or so years. My husband is tall, so we used to stow a few kitchen items in a hard-to-reach cabinet that the homeowners didn’t use. Worked for the owners and for us. Probably a once in a lifetime arrangement!
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We lived in the Netherlands for a few years. Our row house windows opened - no screens. My brother was stationed with the Navy on Sardinia for a few years. His wife begged us to ship a roll of screening material to her for the windows in their rental off base. I remember staying in a hotel in Rome in a room about 3 floors up from street level with giant windows that opened - no screens and no barriers to falling out of them…
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I stayed for a few days in a flat in London decades upon decades ago, when I was a student. There were gas hot water heaters in the walls above the bathtub and the kitchen sink, which you had to light and then wait for the water to heat. But you had to feed the gas meter (it was literally in the Water Closet with the toilet) with shillings (told you it was a long time ago, before the pound went decimal*) to get gas to run the water heaters (and stove, I assume). So kind of the same experience. Except that there were two tombstones in the bathroom, propped against the wall.
- for you youngsters: 12 pence to a shilling, and 20 shillings to a pound. Somewhere around here I have a 10 shilling paper note. So when George Harrison sings in Taxman “…Let me tell you how it will be, it’s one for you nineteen for me” he’s talking about shillings. I’ll shut up now.
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Yes! Our hotel in Florence had HUGE windows that opened. No screens. They stayed shut!
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They really look ugly and worn out.
I wouldn’t cook in them to safe my life.
Incredible what people use and accept to cook in.
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The older ones harken me back to an AIRB&B I once stayed at. Hate that.
