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When I realized in 2005 that my three adult children and my ex-wife had each been to Europe I decided it was past time for me to also go “across the pond”. Carol and I went to Paris and, like many Americans, I fell in love with “the city of light”. That trip began a series of trips mostly on riverboat cruises that whetted my appetite for “more”. I felt some deep emotional connection with France: I wanted more time there and particularly to explore more parts of the country to see how “real French people” live. But how to meet these people and how to travel more frequently and longer without breaking the budget? Intervac, an international house-trading organization, became the answer. Intervac was started over 25 years ago by teachers who had vacation time but not a lot of money—so they set up a system to trade homes with people around the world. They also have a large number of participants in France, which suited our purpose. And they offer “hospitality exchanges” where the host family remains “in residence”, providing sleeping accommodations and use of cooking and dining facilities in exchange for the same privileges at some future time in the home of the people who visit the US. We have a home within 20 minutes of Boston with spare bedrooms and 3 bathrooms and we quickly discovered that our ability to house up to 6 additional people in beds plus ample room for our air mattresses and futons to sleep many more (we once had a marching band of 15 move in with us for a weekend) made us an attractive venue. We have had inquiries from most European countries in the 4 years we have been in the program but accepted only guests from France (9 parties) and Germany (1) with the understanding we would “someday-eventually” visit their homes. Often our guests consisted of 2 couples, once a couple with a grown daughter, and once a party of 7 adults. One couple brought their 6-year old son; another brought children aged 8, 6 and 2. They were generally professional people, university educated, “middle class and upper middle class”, and from all over France. We thoroughly enjoyed each family and at least one person in each group was fairly fluent in English. Carol speaks French reasonably fluently; I do not. Generally each family also visited New York, and Washington DC during their US visit, staying at Intervac homes in each location. We decided we would extend our hospitality beyond the “room and cooking privileges” understanding and feed them their first dinner and their breakfasts each day. After the firsts morning they usually bought their own food for breakfast and usually ate dinner before returning from sightseeing at night. Occasionally they cooked for us! Several times we went out to a local Bar-B-Que joint that offered blues music—this was always a big hit. We did not offer the use of our cars, though that is an option in the system. In 2015 our “someday” arrived. We had kept in contact with each family and explained we were planning the trip to see “France outside of Paris and Lyon” and would be visiting them. Their response was universally enthusiastic and it enabled us to spend 7 weeks putting 3500 miles on a rental car and experiencing France “as the locals do” (at least the upper-middle-class locals). They opened their homes and their vacation homes from Versailles to Strasbourg to Tours and Provence; they contacted relatives to welcome us in cities we wanted to visit but had no Intervac family contacts; Intervac made the entire journey much more enjoyable and affordable than it would have been traveling from hotel to hotel. Most exciting: while staying in Veigne, a village in the Loire Valley (near Tours) we learned both parents in the family got offers to do a work/study program at Boston University for the academic year 2017-18. They need an affordable place in the pricey Boston area big enough for 3 children and a backyard to play in, and it didn’t take us long to offer them a house swap for that year. So our plan is to move to France and use Veigne as a starting point to see the rest of that beautiful country and to travel conveniently to Portugal, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, plus England and Scotland. This means the Red Sox will probably go to the playoffs in 2017 without our direct participation, but it is a small price to pay for the opportunity to see Europe on a “visit Pennsylvania” budget. Two of the great families that we've met: The Sennepins and the Vincents. |
