If you are staying in Vienna for a week or more, a rented apartment could be a much better bet than…read morea hotel - both cheaper and with the flexibility of having a small kitchen. Singerstrasse is very centrally located - more so than most hotels, in fact - and well furnished in a smart, modern style. So, you will have to forgo a few things you would get in a hotel - there's no gym or pool, for instance, and no room service (but then you do have the kitchen). Rooms range in size from hotel bedroom to medium-sized apartment. There is also a car park.

About a year and a half ago, my boyfriend got a good job offer, so we decided to move to Vienna. We…read moreare both computer engineers, so there was no fear if I'd be able to find a job pretty quickly, too. After some research on accomodation options in Vienna (and also on a quite tight schedule), we decided that Zuwanderer Fonds were the safest option. No way we'd get scammed by an agency set by the AK to help the immigant workers. Wow, how naive we've been! We took the only available apartment. It was small and way in the outskrts of Vienna, and quite pricey at that, but it had some rudimentary furniture and we decided it will do until we settle in. My boyfriend moved in first. He got a list of all the apartment inventory, graded between 1 and 5, depending on its condition. First thing he noticed is that the sofa had some nasty stains and that it reaked of urine. He talked to the Hauswartin about it. She agreed to add a note on the inventory list about the state of the sofa and gave him a textile freshener (?!?). We never used that sofa for our entire stay there. Fast forward a year later. We found a bigger and cheaper placer closer to town. It is the day to hand over the apartment and the Hauswartin to check if it is all okay. We spent a whole day prior cleaning the place. It was sparkling and spotless and we were pretty confident that we will get all of our deposit back. At the entrance of the building the Hauswartin and her husband (?!?) await for us. Frowning, hostile. We get in the apartment. He demands our house keys practically at the doors. She sits down with the inventory list, he is opening all closets, flushing the toilet frantically and behaving like a madman. They talk to each other, some German dialect. Not very easy for us foreigners to understand. But they don't care (or do it on purpose). He is trying very hard to find a fault in the apartment, and behaving very hostile. Finally he hits gold - the sofa. Immediately he starts yelling at us, not even pausing to listen to our explanation that it was like that when we moved in, that we have a signed document stating that fact, signed by his wife who is being silent about it. She finally admits that we are saying the truth, but he does not care. Obviously we were having some crazy parties and people were drunk and pissing on the sofa, he concludes. We have to pay to get it cleaned. We try to explain that the prior temant was a woman with a small child, but he deduces that she was German, so there is no way tnat her baby would pee on the sofa (we were two adult Croatians, so we apparently would). We were in shock. But he continued with his monologue. Matrasses were also stained (which is also the state found while moving in, but after the Hauswartin's reaction to the pissed sofa, we didn't even bother to report).This continued for about half an hour, and then it was finished. Like in a daze, we just signed the paper (how many times we regretted this...), and left. The next day, after a restless night, my boyfriend went to Zuwanderer Fonds to report this. They first sent him here and there, and was at the end directed to talk to the Technical Services. A man there seemed sympathetic to our story and said he will send somebody to re-assess the state of the apartment, and also copied the signed statement by the Hauswartin about the sofa's condition. He wrote down pur telephone number and said he'll call. He didn't. Two months later we got the bill in the mail. 2/3 of our pretty huge deposit was gone. We talked to a friend (Austrian) about it. She said we could hire a lawyer who could probably beat their charges, but he would end up costing more than what we 'd get back. In the end, the money was the least of the problems. Coming to live in a country which has invested nothing in your education, but got two highly skilled workers who payed their dues and in return being treated like crap from the very same service devised to help them, it was an eye opening experience. The point of my lenghty story is this - I just want to warn other fellow expats to either stay away from the oh-so-missleadingly-named Zuwanderer Fonds, or to keep very high level of precaution with dealing with them. Please, don't let our story not repeat itself, learn from our mistakes.

From the owner: Willkommen in Wien! Wilkommen in Pilgram Apatments!…read more Pilgram Apartments ist in Wien mit Immobilien zur temporären Vermietung tätig. Ob kleines Studio, 2-Zimmer Wohnung oder grösszügiges 3-Zimmer Apartment - alle unsere Wohneinheiten sind komplett ausgestattet und befinden sich in zentraler Stadtlage Nähe U-Bahn Station Pilgramgasse. Wohnung mieten auf Zeit mit Service und Stil im Herzen von Wien. Die Hauptstadt Österreichs beeindruckt mit historischen Bauten, kultureller Vielfalt und kulinarischen Genüssen. Wien ist ebenso bekannt für seinen Kulturerbe wie für seine Kaffeekultur und hat sich als internationaler Kongress- und Tagungsort etabliert.