4. Finding accommodation

 

Other than when staying with friends, the vast majority of my accommodation for this trip has been arranged through home exchanges. Here, I have either a guest room in someone’s home or in most instances a small apartment for free. 

Over the 30 nights of my trip, only four nights involve paying for hotel accommodation, in some cases I didn't bother to look for a home exchange when it was just one night. My total hotel accommodation cost is just €220 - including breakfasts, and some hotels even have saunas, steamrooms and swimming pools.

What is a home exchange and how does it work? 

My wife Tricia and I first caught the home exchange bug back in 1996, when living in Dublin. 'Bug' is the perfect term for it, as once you experience home exchange, you are very reluctant to revert to staying in hotels or airbnbs. 

We have completed 32 home exchanges since 1996 with multiple exchange organisations, including Intervac, HomeLink, LoveHomeSwap, Échange de Maisons, Guest to Guest and most recently HomeExchange. 

 

We have had amazing and memorable family exchanges to the following places: 

• France (8): Orleans;  Dinan;  Rouen;  Laval;  Finistère; Paris;  Vidauban (Var); Les Sables d'Olonne.
• Ireland (4): Galway (2); Dublin;  Limerick. 
• United States (3): Boston, Pasadena (CA), San Francisco.
• Italy (2): Sorrento;  Verona.
• Sweden (2): Stockholm;  Ystad.
• England (2): Somerset;  Chester.
• Iceland (2): Kópavogur;  Akureyri.
• Netherlands (2): Leiden; Amsterdam.
• Czechia: Prague.
• Finland: Helsinki.
• Canada: Montreal.
• Germany: Erfurt.
• Switzerland: Neuchâtel.
• Belgium: Sint-Truiden.
• Greece: Saronida, near Athens.

When we started 28 years ago, in the days before mobile phones or internet, the process involved getting catalogues the size of phone directories delivered by post. You then had to sit down and go through the single black and white photos provided (of some) of the possible houses, with the telephone and postal addresses also given. You made a shortlist, sent off hand written or typed letters and waited for a response.

Needless to say, things have moved on a long way since then, and now sophisticated apps allow tailored searches, with results full of high resolution photos and hyperlinks instead. Other developments include the possibility of going to someone's home without the need for them to swap directly with you simultaneously - or even at all. This brings me to the idea of GuestPoints.

HomeExchange GuestPoints

HomeExchange has a brilliant system of GuestPoints where people can stay with you for GuestPoints, you then accumulate these and use them to travel anywhere in the world. The system works really well if you have a secondary home or holiday apartment, or even if you have a guest room. We are lucky to have converted part of our garage to a 'granny flat' ten years ago and now use it to welcome guests for points, instead of swapping our home. 

 

Finding places to stay with home exchange for this Interrail trip took a LOT of patience. I started the process back in March and found a place to stay fairly easily for some cities such as Berlin, Bratislava, Budapest, Krakow, Prague, Vienna and Warsaw. Other cities such as Amsterdam, Tallinn and Vilnius proved much more difficult. I must have sent over 60 enquiries to Amsterdam alone, and in many cases did not get a reply. I only secured a place there in mid-August. 

At the time of writing, I have not got any home exchnge property in Vilnius, so I have booked a hotel there instead. It isn't that there is a lack of properties there, rather it seems like they are mostly rented on other platforms such as Airbnb. The ones I did find all had a cleaning fee attached which was higher than the cost of staying in a good hotel. I also have hotels booked for any one-night stays, as in Liverpool and Kaunas (Lithuania). 

I also booked back-up accommodation in all cities with either Agoda.com or Booking.com in case a home owner might have to cancel for any reason. These sites offer free cancellation possibilities in the event that you then don't require the bookings. You just need to remember to set a reminder/alarm on your phone for the last cancellation date for each individual property booked.