What about the vacation itself?

Our stay in Venice was a non-simultaneous home-exchange: Giuliana Bondi and her family stayed at our place over Christmas / New Year 2006, when we were in Mali and we went to their place in July 2006, when they where on vacation in the mountains.

This exchange made us the temporary residents of a “porta sola”, a small house in Cannereggio, near the old Jewish ghetto. This area was definitely off the beaten tracks and our most memorable experiences were having breakfast at the local cafés and evening drinks in neighborhood bars with handsome waiters remembering your favorite drinks from the day before.

Heidi together with her friends Andrea and Claudia had a whole week to slowly explore this very special city, Gilles only three but nevertheless was touched by its magic. There was one downside, the heat was unbearable, at times it felt as if the water in the canals was boiling.

Doing a Home-Exchange, does this mean anything to you? The system is rather simple: you exchange your apartment / your house with someone else during your vacation: you live at this person’s place and your exchange partner comes to stay at your place in the meantime.

There are many advantages in doing this: (1) You pay nothing for accommodation during your vacation and enjoy a nice apartment or a beautiful, comfortable house. (2) You do not have to eat out three times a day, and usually you exchange cars.

How does it work? (1) On www.intervac.com you can “advertise” your apartment / home and define what you are looking for. There are many such organizations; Intervac is the oldest one and the second biggest, as far as we know. (2) You contact the persons whose offer might suit you and you work out an agreement. We often contacted people who didn’t plan to travel to Austria but changed their mind when they received our offer. (3) This simply costs about 80 € per year, actually, in some countries 120 €, which is about the price for a night in a barely acceptable hotel in a major city!

Can we recommend it? We have so far made 23 home-exchanges, all of them were good to fantastic experiences. We exchanged with a beautiful house downtown San Francisco near the Castro District with view on the whole bay area, with a big house in the Provence in the south of France with a very nice pool and a breathtaking view on the sea, with a very nice house with a garden full of flowers in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, only to give you a sample of our experiences. The most import issue: communicate, communicate, communicate, what you expect, what you definitely don’t want, ...