Our House

When we first had the idea to do this trip, I thought we would try and find a couple Airbnb‘s to stay in while we traveled around the Netherlands and Belgium.  I spent way too many hours looking for Airbnb’s only to find that many were not child friendly, didn’t list their availability several months in advance, and Airbnb’s contact system makes it very difficult to contact hosts in advance to ask questions without actually making a reservation.  The best one I found for our family was in Utrecht, was kid friendly, but was still $98/night.  Multiply that by about 50 nights and we’re talking $5,000+.  That’s a lot of money –  even if we did manage to rent our house for a few nights. So, I started thinking about a home exchange.

If you’re unfamiliar with what a home exchange is, watch the movie The Holiday with Jude Law, Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet and Jack Black.  It was released in 2006 – the same year I graduated from college and took my first trip to Europe.  I remember watching it and thinking “that sounds awesome – I want to do that someday.”.  A home exchange is just what it sounds like – you exchange homes with another family.  You live in their house, use their kitchen, sleep in their beds and play with their kids toys.  For free.  It’s a great way to experience life as a local and have many of the amenities you wouldn’t get from an Airbnb and definitely not from a hotel.  But the real question was: Would anyone want to come to Madison?

I figured that most Europeans interested in visiting the U.S. would want to visit popular destinations like New York City, California, Florida, or Washington, D.C.  I doubted anyone had even heard of Madison.  But we gave it shot.  I created a profile for our house at Home Exchange in November 2017.

In December and January, I started contacting other families who indicated in their profile that they were interested in visiting the U.S.  It’s kind of like online dating.  You create a profile with pictures of your house and city, note a few activities your family is interested in, and hope that you look attractive to someone you’ve never met.  You can list destinations you are interested in visiting and search for other families who are interested in visiting your area.

In total, I contacted about 40 families in the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland and England.  I received separate inquires from 8 families who found us.  We had serious conversations with 4 families and ended up accepting an exchange with a family from the city of Amersfoort in the Netherlands.  Ironically, they were one of the families that contacted us and they did so in the first few weeks after we set up our profile.  We are both 30-something couples with two young boys.  Their house had the crib, children’s toys, walkable/bikeable neighborhood and proximity to other cities in the Netherlands that we were looking for.  We had several conversations  using the messaging system on Home Exchange’s website and agreed to exchange homes for the summer of 2018.  To say we were excited was an understatement.  We bought our plane tickets two weeks later and let them know.  We were coming.  No backing out now or we’d be sleeping on your couch.  Haha.

Our house in Amersfoort is very close to the train station, so we walked here after getting off the train from the Amsterdam airport.  It was an easy walk.  Brian might say it was a little more difficult because he was the one pulling the two heavy wheeled suitcases, but even Jack managed to push his own suitcase across the cobblestones streets and sidewalks.

We found the house easily thanks to my strange ability to look at something on Google Earth several weeks prior to us leaving and memorize the directions.  Brian’s always impressed that I know where I’m going in strange towns.  When I was learning to drive my Dad would always give directions by saying “go west” or “head north” and I would get frustrated because I didn’t know which way north was.  I just knew to turn right by the bank.  Well, now that sense of direction comes in really handy!

When we opened the door to our house we were greeted by the steepest staircase I have ever seen leading up to the second floor from the front hallway.

Goal for the summer?  Keep all of us from falling down the stairs. Immediately to the right is the entrance to the main living area, dining area and kitchen.  The whole first floor is open concept which is great for keeping an eye on the kids.  I also love that the entrance to the backyard is right off the living room.  The boys can be playing inside or outside and I can still see them from all other parts of the first floor.  There were a lot of kids toys by the bookshelf in the living room and the kids made themselves right at home instantly.  Ben discovered a Little Tikes school bus like the one we have at home and was elated.  Jack found a giant airplane and immediately started loading little people and some of the cars we had brought with us into it.  We all laughed when a familiar looking tractor started singing “Old MacDonald” in Dutch and the only part we recognized was the “E-I-E-I-O” at the end.  Ben kept saying “E-I-E-I-O” over and over again.

I walked over to the kitchen and started to check things out.  Then I realized how spoiled we are in the U.S.  What I thought from the pictures was a microwave was actually a small oven/microwave.  There is a dishwasher (thankfully!) and several small cupboards.  Jack asked this morning why they don’t have a brown door for food.  I had no idea what he meant, but then realized he was asking why there was no pantry for food (ours has a brown door).  He didn’t understand that all their food fits in only a couple drawers.  The refrigerator is smaller than most apartment refrigerators and the freezer is separate and located on the third floor of the house.  There is definitely no bulk shopping at Costco happening here – there wouldn’t be anywhere to put all the food!

The bedrooms are small, but no different than the ones we have at home because our bedrooms are also very small by American standards.  The bed is super comfy – some kind of foam like we have at home – and the pillow is the same and great.  I think I need to get one of these pillows.  Ben has a crib and Jack a toddler bed.  There is no air conditioning in the house (it’s not common in the Netherlands), but it’s not  needed because there is no humidity, the daytime temperatures haven’t surpassed 85 in the past week, and at night the lows are in the 50’s so you just need to sleep with the windows open to stay cool.  None of the windows have screens, but I haven’t noticed any mosquitoes so it’s not a big deal.  As long as a bird or stray cat doesn’t jump in, we’re good.

The third floor of the house has an extra bedroom and a play room as well as the washing machine and freezer.  There is no dryer.  Instead, there are several drying racks to hang your clothes on.  This will take some getting used to.  Especially with the towels.  I miss the soft, fluffy towels we have at home.  When towels are air dried they tend to be hard and kind of crusty.

Outside, there is a small grassy area and a patio table where we’ve been enjoying ourselves at night after the kids go to bed.  There is an enclosed storage area and carport for the Toyota Rav4 we are borrowing (they are borrowing our car as well).  For the Netherlands, a Rav4 is a huge car.  It barely fits in the carport and it is tricky getting it in/out of the garage and turning in/out of the alley driveway due to the lack of space.  It’s also a manual transmission, so for the next two months I get to be the family chauffeur because Brian doesn’t know how to drive a manual transmission car.  This is another skill I’m so glad I learned on a crappy car in college.  Driving that red Chevy Beretta with the giant dual exhaust pipes and undercarriage lighting was good for something!