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Member Stories

My Favorite Home Exchange

My favorite home exchange was about 3 years ago when we exchanged our San Diego house for one in Copenhagen, Denmark. The house was astonishing–filled with art and artifacts. The owner was a Danish military officer. His wife was the art buyer.

We flew from San Diego to London and were booked to go from London to Copenhagen, arriving around 6 p.m. However, there were several glitches and we didn’t arrive in Copenhagen until after midnight. The airport was closed–ours was the last flight in. We were out in the middle of nowhere, no cabs were available. We were, of course, exhausted from the trip.

Having no idea what else to do, we called our exchangers. I asked them to let us know how we could get to a hotel for the night, but they insisted on coming to the airport to take us to their home. It was a half-hour drive each way. We had an instant rapport with our exchangers and chatted all the way to their house. They gave us a glass of wine and offered a meal, but all we wanted was to become horizontal for at least seven hours.

The next day, they arranged a dinner party for us. We met the rest of their family and some of the neighbors. Amazingly, we survived until 10:30 that night and got back on a regular sleep schedule.

Our new exchange friends left the next day for San Diego. They took excellent care of our house as we did of theirs. I must add that we have never had a bad exchange or found our house in disarray when we got home. We have, of course, always left the exchange house in good condition. They also left a meal in the fridge (we had done the same in San Diego).

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