Honestly, would you have guessed correctly in which country the pictures at right and below were taken? I must confess I wouldn’t have had a clue. Doing a little research on this Eastern European country, I became more and more curious about its natural beauty, rich culture and history.
Once in a while we receive home exchange offers from places less travelled. (At least from the perspective of a Western home exchanger.) All things 
considered, would you accept a home swap to a country totally unfamiliar and unknown to you?It is not like that place you have been dreaming and fantasying about for years (think Amalfi Coast!). It is more like a real travel adventure where you don’t know what to expect.
(On a side note, that reminds me of a trip to Lahore, Pakistan, that I took as a young flight attendant for Swissair. Lahore is situated on the legendary silk-road. Its unique blend of 
architecture is evidence of its centuries ago Mughal rule and the era of the British Raj.
I came to Lahore with an invitation from a carpet dealer who I had met in Switzerland through a friend. When I asked a local taxi driver for his address upon my arrival, the taxi driver laughed at me. I later learned, Lahore was an 8-million-people-city and the name of my host, Malik, was as common as “Miller” in America. But after only one hour, Mister Malik showed up at the train station to pick me up. It must have been thanks to the taxi driver’s excellent networking skills. 
For the next 4 days I was treated like royalty and shown the most amazing mosques, gardens and palaces. However, what stayed most vividly in my memory was a dinner conversation about arranged marriages that the wife (and matriarch) of my host’s family held with her four teenage sons in front of her husband and me.)
Such an unforgettable trip can be a true revelation for the adventurous traveler. Pakistan hadn’t be on top of my travel list, but because I had the opportunity 
to visit there, I was given an extraordinary chance to see a world culturally so different from my own. The same holds true for home exchange offers from less traveled territories. If you like to discover new cultures this might be a good opportunity for you.
These beautiful pictures, here, were taken in Bulgaria. If you are interested in exploring parts of South Eastern Europe via home exchange, please contact JewettStreet member Rachel in Stara Zagora, Home-ID 2360 and Home-ID 2409. 
Her preferred travel destination is Southern France this summer.
Other listings in Eastern Europe
In order to contact JewettStreet members, you must be registered.
Pictures from top to bottom: Rila Monastery, Red Creeks at Belogradchik, Todorka Peak, Roman Amphitheater in Stara Zagora, Street in Stara Zagora, Burghas Black Sea
There is an ongoing discussion in the home exchange community about these two fundamentally different concepts.
The big advantage of free sites, of course, is that you don’t pay for a membership fee. If you are new to home exchange, becoming a member of a free site might be a good option to explore the concept further. However, scams and uncommitted exchangers are more frequent with these home exchange clubs.
What I noticed since JewettStreet has become fee-based is that we attract more of the experienced home exchangers. They have tested the waters and are convinced swappers. That is certainly one reason why you are much more likely to find a swap on a fee-based site.
Eileen, a seasoned home exchanger from California, wrote to me recently about her experiences with free sites. With her permission, I would like to share her insightful thoughts with you.
“Hello,
Thank you for your email. I took a moment to look at your site which is quite impressive and very user friendly.
I am a “seasoned” home exchanger having started in the 1980’s. At the moment, I have rather inflexible dates for being in Paris (mid-December through January 20th, 2010). My partner is a university professor so we must travel during break-time. It is difficult to find people who want to swap during this time, without going with a site that has a large database. Craigslist was something I decided to put out there (I’m from San Francisco which is the birthplace of the site), although, I am quite hesitant to go that route. I’ve found that sites who have free listings (i.e. itamos) have people who are not interested in swapping; hence, do not respond or really have no idea what is entailed. Most are quite young and are used to couchsurfing (We are way too old for that…). There is also the scam factor as I’ve been alerted to several scams that have operated on Craigs.
I will certainly consider signing up on your site. I also appreciate your link to knowyourtrade.com. It seems like a very useful resource. Thank you again, Ursula, for your time and efforts.
Regards,
Eileen“
And what are your experiences?
The clipping of a New York Times article about the homes of literary exiles from Europe who settled in Los Angeles in the thirthies and forties fell into my hands, recently, and brought back own memories of a meeting with literary history on a discovery tour of Carl Zuckmayer in Vermont.
Ever since I read the chapter about his life as an exile playwright-turned-farmer in the Vermont Mountains in his autobiography “A Part of Myself”, I felt the urge to find the scene of his activities during the war years.
Together with Bertolt Brecht, Zuckmayer was one of the most popular and significant German-speaking dramatists of the twentieth century. Anti-fascist with part-Jewish background, he was forced to flee Germany. This decisive moment in Zuckmayer’s life brought his highly successful writing career to a halt.
His settling in Barnard, a Vermont picture-book village and summer playground for wealthy New Yorkers, was no accident. Zuckmayer’s friend Dorothy Thomson and her Nobel-price author husband Sinclair Lewis were part-time residents of Barnard.
My online research to find the address of the former Zuckmayer farm brought no results. So, when I arrived in Barnard on a breezy summer day a few years ago, I headed straight to the only shop in town - a typical New England general store where the locals chat over a cup of coffee and get their Sunday paper and other essentials. The sporty, sun-tanned youth at the bar knowingly smiled when he gave me directions to the farm. To my surprise, the Barnard residents were used to the question posed by pilgrimaging Swiss, Germans and Austrians.
Aware of trespassing, my family and I cautiously approached the well-maintained Shaker-red homestead outside of town. A young man stepped out of the house. You could tell from his reaction that he too, was used to strangers walking up to the propriety and he knew why they were coming. My husband and I couldn’t believe our luck when he introduced himself as the son of the present owner, willing to tell us everything he knew about the Zuckmayer era of Backwoods Farm. At the end of what must have been a 20 minutes conversation, he invited us inside for a house tour. The new owners had gently restored the original interior architecture. Beside ourselves with this development, we passed through the rooms, getting a sense of what the house might have been like in Zuckmayer’s times. The tour ended in the kitchen, a dark room with low ceiling, typical of old farmhouses in New England. As a farewell, the host offered us a refreshing drink of spring water. It was of the same sweet taste Zuckmayer had raved about in his memoir…
The Backwoods Farm is not available for Home Exchange, but here are some other marvelous JewettStreet swap offers from Vermont:
JewettStreet is updating its hardware and network infrastructure. Therefore we expect one down time of 30 minutes on January 21, 2009 between 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. CET (00:00 a.m. and 02:00 a.m. EST) and some very short periods of down time (approx. 1 minute each) on January 23, 2009 between 4:30 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. CET (10:30 p.m. (01.22.09) and 1:30 a.m. EST).
We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your understanding.
The founder of JewettStreet.com, Ursula Godwin Niesmann, maintains this blog for JewettStreet members and for anyone interested in Home Exchange.
If you have any questions, or suggestions, feel free to use the JewettStreet contact form. See you soon again!
Yours,
The JewettStreet.com Team
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