The Coccolo family sent us the story of their memorable home exchange.

Catania, Italy

Trondheim, Norwey

They had put on-line the ad of their flat in Catania, curious about the possibility of swapping house with people from different countries. The day after they already received an offer by a Norwegian family that was desirous of sun and Sicily.

At the beginning they were quite doubtful about the whole thing, ‘cause they didn’t know how to trust someone they didn’t know. So they started to exchange letters, then e-mails, then they spoke using Skype. They soon became friendly with the Ibsen family –that was quite familiar with house swaps instead- thanks to some similarities between Maria and Grethe, 35 and 34 respectively.

The Ibsens were in need of sun and history and the Coccolo family wanted to visit unusual landscapes and the famous fiords.

At a cartain point they felt they could trust each other so that they planned a home exchange from the 15th to the 30th of May 2008 (wonderful timing by the way, since in Norwey the sun doesn’t goes down and in Sicily it’s warm enough -but not too hot- to enjoy the marvelous Catania and the beaches all around).

“The vision of the midnight sun”, Maria says, “is something incredible. Not seeing the going down of the sun is somehow puzzling, but it has something amazing and special in it…Like a sense of unreachable eternity.

The Ibsen house was clean, tidy, and cosy: two bedrooms, a big bathroom and a comfortable kitchen where we could cook when we didn’t get out of Trondheim. By the way, we had also decided to exchange our cars so that we went around Norway easily and without wasting a lot of money in hiring a car. We saw so many natural beauties…”.

Maria’s story continues with interesting details about typical Norwegian food, landscapes, flora and fauna…

Ha det (goodbye in Norwegian)!