Enjoy the richest, most affordable style of travel in Germany with an international home exchange!

If a trip to Germany is in your future plans, why not make your trip truly exceptional?!

Instead of a whirlwind tour where you run around like a crazy person in a futile attempt to embrace the culture, try staying put in one location and let the culture embrace you, naturally!

By packing in too much – too many travel days, too many destinations, too many landmark sites, and most of all, too many tourists, you defeat the possibility of having a truly authentic, enriching, and wonderfully enjoyable (and relaxing) cultural experience.

The wonderful news is that the richest style of travel that I know of, which supports cultural immersion, is also one of the most affordable! It is called international home exchange, and it is exactly what you imagine. You actually trade/swap/exchange your home (wherever that may be) with a home owner (or renter, etc…) in a desirable base location in Germany. From that base, you get to explore at your leisure, perhaps adding a few nights to broaden your reach, at the beginning or end of the exchange. During your exchange, you can explore your immediate area, in-depth, immersing yourself in the local culture and everything it has to offer, both on and off the beaten path. You can easily travel within an hour and a half of your base on day trips, which gives a good reach, without having to constantly move from hotel to hotel to hotel. This spares stress and time in transit.

In fact, I may beat you to a home exchange in Germany! My family will be exchanging our home in New Jersey with a family in Germany during the summer of 2015.  You can do it, too! There are thousands of homes in Germany currently on the market for exchange. For instance, on the home exchange websites listed below, there are over 4,000 listings:

www.homeforexchange.com              247 listings in Germany

www.homeexchange.com                   868 listings in Germany

www.homelinkinternational.com      1986 listings in Germany

www.homeforhome.com                     1247 listings in Germany

From personal experience, international home exchange is credible and reliable. My family has been privileged to enjoy five incredible home exchanges in recent years. International home exchange has enabled us to afford to live like locals in France, England, and Spain for a total of fifteen weeks during three of the past five summers.

I am infatuated with international home exchange because of its ability to bring rich, cultural travel within reach of more people, especially families. I enjoy the exchange so much that I have written a book on the subject!  In “Have Home Will Travel, The Ultimate International Home Exchange Guide for Families”, you will find all the information you need to embark on an independent cultural adventure, with or without an international home exchange, but hopefully with!

If you are interested in learning more about international home exchange, or my family’s travel experiences/photos, or my book, please check out The Trusting Traveler Website at www.trustingtraveler.com, and if you sign up to follow my blog, you will be rewarded with a 20% promo code to purchase my book.

With a home exchange in hand, utilize this great website (BasketsLifeTravel.com) to find out all that Germany has to offer!

Kerry Ascione has written this article exclusively for BasketsLifeTravel.com. Kerry lives in New Jersey with her family. She is a travel writer, blogger, and published author. Her first book, “Have Home Will Travel, The Ultimate International Home Exchange Guide For Families“ is now available on multiple platforms.

For all BasketsLife readers, if you purchase Kerry’s Book she is giving a 30% discount – how awesome is that?! The book retails for $22.99 and can be purchased on CreateSpace and Amazon. Hurry before this amazing offer ends! Use this code to purchase (47AVHFJF) “Have Home Will Travel” by Kelly Ascione.

– Stacey