What I Use: Home Swap 2018 (Premium)

After two years of detours, our 2018 home swap sees us return to our normal three-week schedule. This year, we’re in Stockholm, Sweden.

As you may recall, my family has been swapping homes each summer since 2006. This year’s swap, then, was our 13th in a row, with 12 of them taking place somewhere in Europe. (We would have done all 13 in Europe, but a planned swap to London several years ago fell apart at the last minute, so we did a U.S.-based home swap that year instead.)

Since moving to Thurrott.com in January 2015, I’ve been on four home swaps: Lyon, France in 2015, Paris, France in 2016, Barcelona, Spain in 2017, and now Stockholm. Lyon was our usual three-week trip, with a side trip to Venice. But the previous two years were truncated to just two weeks for different reasons: In 2016, we needed to be around to get my son started in college, which trimmed a few weeks off our summer. And then last year, we suddenly decided to move to Pennsylvania, which likewise trimmed time off our summer.

Stockholm wasn’t our first choice this year. Indeed, Stockholm wasn’t even on the list: We were hoping to swap in Italy, France, or Spain. But when a request came up from Stockholm, we investigated the city and the area and decided that it would make a fine choice. And given how hot it usually is on these trips—we seem to hit the annual European Heat Wave ™ each time—we figured a cooler destination would be a welcome change from the norm.

That didn’t work out: This year’s European Heat Wave ™ was perfectly timed to coincide with the end of a historic heat wave at home, and Stockholm will experience hotter-than-usual temperatures for our entire stay. Only this week, two weeks into the trip, have we finally felt cool air. That bit has been pretty miserable.

But Stockholm itself is beautiful, friendly, and accessible, and we’ve had a great trip. So enough of the travel talk. Here’s what I’ve brought with me and what I’m using on this trip, and why.

Home swap service. We used Intervac to find our home swap this year, and that’s generally been the case every year. (The only exceptions have been when we’ve swapped with families we already know, as we’ve done twice, so far, in Amsterdam.) We can recommend Intervac highly: With the exception of the London debacle, we’ve had tremendous good luck each year.

The home. We are staying in a single-family home in Tullinge, Sweden, which is about 25 minutes by train from downtown Stockholm. We’ve gone into the city every day so far, with the exception of the days we were visiting Berlin. Which reminds me.

The side trip. With the return to a three-week schedule this year, we were able to schedule a side trip again, this time to Berlin. My wife and I had been there last winter, and we thought the kids would love it. And they did. Especially the AC at the hotel.

Internet. We’ve had some bad experiences with Internet access at our home swaps over the years, so this is the only thing we really press people on when we’re deciding on a place. But the connection here is good (roughly 150 Mbps down and 25 Mbps up), via Wi-Fi, and excellent on Ethernet. So I’ve been able to work and do podcasts normally. That hasn’t always been the case.

I work from here. I feel the need to repeat this each time a home swap comes up, so here goes again: I am not on a luxury three-week vacation to Europe. Instead, we are simply swapping homes with another family and I am living and working from here every day. Not “exactly like I do from home,” given the time change. But the goal is to get some work done in the morning, head out into the city for 4-5 hours, and then be back here for work in the mid-afternoon when everyone in the U.S. is starting to work. I have absolutely taken time off, and while I’ve not really had any complete days off, the photos I’ve taken on this trip will attest to the fact that I’ve done something every day. (You can follow me on Instagram to see them.)

PCs. After briefly flirting with the idea of bringing only a single PC with me to Stockholm, I decided to bring two: The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga I just reviewed and the Surface Book (which is on the Insider Preview). I’ve split my time between them pretty evenly, but the Surface Book 2 was experiencing serious performance issues (possibly related to the Insider Preview), so I reset it, and it’s fine now.

Phones. Since moving to Android and Project Fi last fall, and then to the Pixel 2 XL just after that, I’ve continued to use this combination. The transparent and inexpensive (and international-friendly) nature of Project Fi is hard to beat, and the Pixel 2 XL, which hugely problematic in many ways, still takes fantastic photos. I also brought the OnePlus 6 with me, though I swapped out the pay-as-you-go SIM I had been using with that device for a Project Fi data SIM so my wife/kids can use it when we’re out in the city. (I also have been using the OnePlus 6 for media since the Pixel 2 XL’s USB-C port is basically broken and won’t work reliably with headphones.)

Tablets. As I did last year, I brought two iPads along for the trip, a slow but capacious (128 GB) iPad mini and a fast but too-big (10.5-inch) iPad Pro.

Carry-on. I still use the Rick Steves Velocé Shoulder Bag as a laptop bag, and it’s with me at all times while traveling. Aside from the laptops, this bag contained my two iPads, a Microsoft Surface Precision Mouse (because you can easily switch it between up to three PCs), a pair of Bose QuietComfort 20 Acoustic Noise Canceling Headphones (highly recommended), a few charging cables, our passports and tickets, and a blue JetBlue blanket, which I use to make skinny airline seat dividers more comfortable.

Luggage. I always carry-on when I fly for what I hope are obvious reasons, and the Rick Steves Ravenna Rolling Case I use naturally meets the smaller size requirements of European airlines (we flew Norwegian this year). So I was able to carry everything on. In addition to my clothing, this bad contained my gadget bag (below), toiletry bag, and the power cables for my two laptops.

Gadgets. Not much has changed since I wrote What I Use: Must-Have Gadgets for Any Trip two summers ago. I still bring a little gadget bag along that is filled with cables and chargers, my USB-based headset (for podcasts), an indispensable travel-sized power strip (with three power receptacles and two USB ports), an Ethernet/USB dongle (for podcasts) and about a dozen international power adapters.

AV. In past years, we’ve brought various things (Mircast dongle, Chromecast, HDMI cable, etc.) to Europe so we could watch movies or whatever on the home swap’s TV. But that’s come to an end, and this year we decided to just wing it. The house here has an Apple TV, and I can use AirPlay to “cast” content to the TV that way. Or use its YouTube app to access my Movies Anywhere-compatible content. We’ve only used it a few times.

Software and services. I wrote about this separately in What I Use: International Travel Apps and Services (Premium). The big takeaway is that a VPN is no longer really necessary.

We fly home this coming Friday.