Letters that say "more information at the following number" can end in dubious deals or in great adventures.

Since the sender of the letter was the Frankfurt Lindenberg hotel group, one could assume that it was the latter.

In short sentences, the letter designed a place of longing called "Luchs": "A half-timbered house from 1903", it said, had just been renovated not far from Frankfurt and was waiting for guests.

It is “in the middle of the forest”, surrounded by meadows.

There is also a wine cellar.

Maria Wiesner

Editor in the society department at FAZ.NET.

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That was more than most of the hideaways that have landed on an Airbnb “hidden accommodation” list for long months of the pandemic.

So we wrote to the number via Whatsapp, and shortly thereafter came a description with Google coordinates: "Please park at the edge of the forest and continue on foot."

Even getting there was a bit of an adventure.

We parked the car, shouldered the weekender and set off, starting from the main path over crunchy paths until, as promised, the half-timbering shimmered through the foliage.

The well-hidden little house turned out to be a treasure trove: in the kitchen there were fruit and vegetables from the surrounding meadows, various sauces in the fridge, and pasta on the shelves.

In the living room next door, the honey-yellow tiles by the designer Sebastian Herkner were already spreading heat by the fireplace before you even got the first piece of wood out from under the bench.

(The little house can only be heated with the fireplace, but the instructions are understandable.) To ensure that the house in the country didn't fall into the country house trap when it came to furnishing, the Seoul graphics office "Gute Form" was commissioned with the design work.

A few Korean characters can be found on everything from record shelves to bookshelves.

Up a flight of stairs is a bed from which you can see across the meadows to the forest.

Only the birds looked into the window from the mountain ash and chirped.

Otherwise there was peace - what more could you ask for?

wine, of course.

The big, black key to the wine cellar was on the kitchen table with a note on it that said, "Drink me."

Would the wine change size like the contents of a bottle with a similar label in the children's book "Alice in Wonderland"?

Since this was an adventure, the attempt had to be dared.

We took the bottle with the golden label from the French Pic Saint-Loup upstairs.

Also because the wolf appeared in the name of the mountain on which the vines had grown, somehow appropriate to the lonely overnight stay in nature.

We cannot say whether the wine actually changed our size.

Nobody saw us out here in the woods.