Ever Swapped Homes?

With more dash than cash it's hard to fulfill your traveling needs...Thinking of the top '100 places you should see before you die' always makes my tummy churn and my face green with envy.

After a wonderful but expensive vacation in the Fatherland I had a brainwave. Somewhere and somehow I had heard about swapping homes. Well, on TV families are known to even swap spouses. With a little bit of investigation (thank you Mr. Google!), I found an app for that or rather several websites. Looking at all the beautiful homes worldwide nurtured my travel bug that bit me years ago. He started to grow and make himself heard: If you swap houses with some of these people, you can stay longer. Hey, there is a way to swap cars too. That takes a big load of your pocket book. The bug could no longer be ignored.

Cheap package tours are an option, at least occasionally, but not in our circumstances. Especially if you live in "Paradise" anyway. We want to travel to Europe as much as possible because of family reasons. And hubby loves France and Italy. And his employer is too stubborn to let us relocate and pay for regular trips.

I was all for it immediately.

But: I hear you ask a) Do you want strangers in your house? b) even sleep in your bed? Guess, how many different people share a hotel bed over time? c) What about valuables and personal stuff? Well, lock it away! And if a glass or a vase breaks, or a book gets mislaid...so be it. In any case, people have insurance.

Well, we women can be very persuasive with the right arguments and the right open-minded partner who wants to please his wife who is a long way from home...

That's how it all started. Hey, Europe here we come: The Intrepid Home Swappers! The world is your oyster- if you like oysters. Who knows where we'll go next if this works out?

Being an old hand on dating sites, my experience with a home swapping site took me right back.

As new hopefuls on a home exchange website, my hubby and I enthusiastically put up photos of our house, plus a catchy description together with details about us. We felt like kids in the candy-store: all these great places and houses all around the world up for grabs at the click of a mouse.

We approached desirable potential partners, sometimes we got replies, and sometimes not: “sorry but...or you're too late”. Then we thought we had found the right fit and we started to communicate by email with the prospective swappers.  At the same time we asked a couple of questions about what they were offering on their part. After a bit of research, at last we were ready to commit: “Let’s do it” only to get blown off: We've found somebody else.

It reminds me of Internet dating. After crafting a compelling personal profile, you click though gazillions of pictures and prospects; you wait for responses or actively approach potential partners. You communicate, sometimes slowly; sometimes unexpectedly excited, making quick progress in getting to know the other side. Then boom—you’re blown off and don’t know what hits you. They disappear from the radar or have the courtesy of informing you that they have met somebody else while you were getting your hopes up. Happens all the time. It’s called double timing.

We lost out while trying to cover our backs and avoid being disappointed if things turned out to be different to what they were portrayed to be. 
We are still "virgins" on the home swapping front so to speak, but we learned our lesson: Apparently one has to jump "into bed" here even more quickly than on dating sites.

You can follow our steps for about months on our travels to Germany and France. The first home swap near Frankfurt turned out to be an all-round positive experience. We absolutely loved it and felt totally at home away from home. Our second exchange made me want to scream when we arrived and then take the prefix ‘in’ out of Intrepid Homeswappers. The location, however, was hard to beat and even the lack of good weather wasn’t that important once you see the sights of Paris.

The topic solicited even more interest with the local media than my book on dating, i.e. the interview with NPR will concentrate on this adventure, yet still plug my book I was promised.

For us it was a great, invaluable experience. We were drawn out our comfort zone, left the rut of daily routine in the US, and managed to enjoy ourselves even though my husband was working for five out of the seven weeks. While we’re still unpacking our six enormous suitcases -68lb.each-, plans for next year are being hatched and little safeguards discussed in order to guarantee an even better exchange next time.

Siggy Buckley

Standard & Poors: Tiny Private Company threatens World's 4th largest Economy

Here are the News: Standard & Poors (allegedly) is downgrading Germany!
Fear!
Panic!
Here is a different reading: tiny little private corporation, a subsidy of American Media Company McGraw Hills, threatens fourth largest economy of the world.
Who gave he Media Company McGraw Hill the right to influence the life of people in countries across the globe? By which legitimate democratic process were they empowered to dictate government decisions in EU countries? I did not see Standard and Poors as a party on a ballot list.
Here is my judgement: Standard & Poors have no legitimacy to influence policy, and their past failures render them incompetent as well. On top the rating agencies are, in comparison, tiny little companies, private organizations, that have no more -   and no less - right to express their opinion than you or me. The total profit of McGraw Hills in 2010 was something in the range of 800 Million US$. That's a flea sh*t compared to the economies those megalomaniacs regularly dare to rate. Rating agencies are the latest symptom of a cancerous system gone havoc. And then there is "the market" listening to "the rating agencies". When did we hand over world government to the monkey house?

Stefan Thiesen is a Germany, UK and USA educated earth and space scientist and science writer. He is an expert in marine science, climatology and planetary sciences, author of several popular science books in German and English as well as a novel and numerous short pieces. he is a regular contributor to www.Opednews.com.

Thanksgiving--from the Perspective of a"Blow in"

(Due to moving the blog posts the dates of publication are off by 2 or 3. Sorry a bout that delay. Contents remain the same.)

Thanksgiving is a uniquely American and Canadian tradition. In Germany, where I grew up, I only knew it from that Thanksgiving Sunday in early autumn in the Catholic Church where thanks is given for a good year’s harvest. Some crops are brought in and put on display under the altar to be blessed. Ireland where I also lived hasn’t adopted this American holiday although it tends to follow American trends in many other regards.

So my exposure to American Thanksgiving is fairly new. It was only introduced into my life a few years ago by my new American husband. I read up on it and know that it originates from the first pilgrims. “When Europeans first arrived to the Americas, they brought with them their own harvest festival traditions from Europe, celebrating their safe voyage, peace and good harvest” (Wikipedia) and blended them with Native American harvest traditions.

Having read up on a topic is one thing; living it can be a different matter. Halloween feels equally strange to me. Our whirlwind romance catapulted me into the open arms of a welcoming family. Not being used to a big family, I find the big get togethers and their customs challenging. In Germany, we never ate turkey. I find the food pairings odd and am not aware of their symbolic meanings. Why pickles with turkey and gravy?  Bread rolls plus potato mash? The overflowing table and abundance of everything makes the Ex Farmer’s wife in me cringe when I think of all the starving people around the world and millions that go hungry in this country alone. In all fairness, not all left-overs go down the garbage disposal. The turkey will be served again in various forms until everybody is fed up eating it. Why not get a smaller turkey in the first place?

I should still embrace the day as one of purely saying thanks for the good life I’m enjoying. Deep down in my heart of hearts, I am grateful for the privileged life-style I’m enjoying. I’m grateful for the fact that my husband has a job and that he brings home the bacon while I can indulge my hobby, i.e., writing. I’m grateful for all my friends and the encouraging words and responses I’m getting from people who “befriend” me and that I’m “linked” to.

I’m grateful that my daughter started her first paid job and that my son will graduate next year too. I’m grateful that I have lived a life in countries with civil liberties and the freedom to express my convictions without persecution. I’m grateful that I was born into this world at this point in time and place.

Yet, being a person for whom the glass is always half-empty, saying thanks doesn’t come natural. Since I feel the years creeping up on me, the cynic in me wants to inject that what is left in the glass is evaporating fast. I would be more grateful if I saw my children more often than just a few days a year. I would be more grateful if my pain didn’t keep me from working in my job.  

Having been told to “Count my blessings” by my Irish housekeeper, I try to do that every day. Shouldn’t we all be grateful for what we have all year long, day in, day out? Do we need a specific day in the year to remind us?

I guess we do. Otherwise we would take it all for granted even more.

PS. My American family would find some German traditions strange too, I’m sure.
Happy Thanksgiving to you all! Siggy Buckley