The Mother of All Exchanges

A member testimonial

By Peter Sederowsky #21067

The law of nature is grim and harsh. When you reach out, in all humility, and expose yourself, it hits you in the face, like the copper studded oak doors at the "The Heritage Club", when you ask for help being down and out. It treats with the same forgiveness and kindness as the bank's repo department when you missed the last (of 36) installment on your car. Any way, we decided to take on Murphy, and his law. I selfishly decided that my family want to spend three months in California. I want to swap house and car for three months. I want to go to California with my family and I want to let the Californians use my house for three months and see if it still exists when I get back. Right on!

It's kind of easy to do a complicated swap with yourself. No arguments or problems. No risk. It's much more difficult to find someone inclined to swap sunny California for Sweden. And for three months. We believe in Sweden that we have nothing to offer. That's correct - to some extent. In the winter we can throw in free ice-fishing, a bottle of Absolute and a snowmobile but it will not help; I can't imagine anyone be so deranged to want to come to Sweden in the middle of winter. Summertime is another story. And, as an added benefit, it's the place where history comes from.

What happens then and how does one go about it? A task like that. A family from San Francisco (or the City as we cosmopolitans - now - knows it) wrote us and reminded us that we actually had discussions about a swap. That was very convenient. We did not want to spend the entire period at one place (that would kind of forfeit the purpose) so we quickly decided to do the swap with them so we could get going with the task to find one or two more families. The SF family was of Swedish ancestry (on both sides) so their minds was already set. We carved it in stone - we were going to swap. We soon thereafter struck a positive chord with a family from Modesto. They had no intentions of going to Stockholm and they were dumbfounded to meet someone who wanted to come to the place of origin for the movie "American Graffiti". After some emailing we "found" each other and decided to swap. I think that we both decided to do the swap more on the fact that we liked each other than anything else. And, we decided to do the swap immediately after the SF family would leave our house.

Then, we got a note from a Los Angeles family in Silver Lake inviting us to swap with them. They didn't want to bother to send photos. Instead they said: "In the event you would like to see how our house looks, you can rent the movie The Next Best Thing with Madonna and Rupert Everett. The house Madonna lives in, that's our house. It was used by Paramount Pictures as location for the movie." Even if the house hadn't been absolutely wonderful we would have done the swap. And, believe it or not, they suggested doing the swap around the date when the Modesto-family was supposed to leave our house.

Now we had the incredible saga of three consecutive swaps for a period of two and a half months. Slowly dangling in front of us.

The door now waiting to slam shut in our face!

Could anything go wrong? Was this a blatant challenge of sound and prudent behavior in a manner not seen since the good ole' dotcom days?

Probably was. But it worked out fine. We had a great stay in California. We became good friends with our respective families, the different communities and the people there; which added something that just money can't buy. Something intangible. One can without problem travel the world but still only be a tourist in reality. But now we got a firmer grip. Now we know a little bit more about something else. Something different. And each other.

Any drawbacks? Yes of course. The biggest one is that as you don't meet the people you swap with - they live in your house and you live in theirs. After weeks of emailing and phone calling, they are in your house and you are in their. We were lucky, as we actually got to meet all of our swapee's as we had lots of time to meet both the Modesto as well as the LA families before they left for Stockholm; and when the SF family came back we of course met up with them (in their home). As an odd consequence you actually become more acquainted with their friends. Especially as in our case, our families had time to introduce us to friends and neighbours before they left. Also I bought a Harley Davidson so I soon found new friends in the Sons of Thunder Motorcycle Club in Merced and the MidCities HOG Chapter in Los Angeles.

We did the same in return - introducing our guests to our friends - and I found out (a little jealously I have to admit) that they had a good time together and our guests became friends with my friends. And that was never the intention.

So, to sum it up, we had a fantastic time in California. We made lots of new friends; we visited places one does not always think about in the first place; we had someone house sitting our place when we were away; we did not need to spend money on hotels and cars. What can I say? It's nice to beat the odds sometimes - at least once…or three times…

What was the best place you might ask? If I answer you would never understand. It's all in the mind and no one understands the other guy perfectly. It's too complicated. Especially as the answer is "Modesto". Suck on that!