What is Helpx??

After making the decision to start this blog I got the infamous writers block. What do I write about? Where do I begin? So I decided to tell you about Helpx before my adventures and experiences with it begin.

I had never heard of Helpx before my friend Trudie mentioned "crazy magical adventures" in Europe, her exact words, (yes she's a bit mental and I'm sure there'll be a lot of that on this trip.) As unemployed students I was wondering how we could afford to travel and thats when she mentioned Helpx.

Helpx is a website community where "Hosts" post profiles about what type of work they need help with and "helpers" reply and arrange to go help them in exchange for food and a place to stay. Fair trade right?

The majority of people who use Helpx live on farms or in old houses that need restoring, which they as a family do themselves and with helpers. Along with helping out the families you get to explore the surrounding areas and because it's mainly farms that means the countryside away from the big touristy city areas, so its pure culture.

Obviously I was a bit apprehensive about going to stay with strangers in a remote location in a country that I didn't know the language of but knowing that I would be with Trudie made it sound so amazing I stepped out of my comfort zone and decided to do it. We decided on Germany, mainly because neither of us had been.

Using Helpx is easy, we searched through the Host's profiles and added some to our favourites and then  went through them together deciding who to email and who just weren't for us. Almost immediately we had a reply from a Host we contacted, a family in a place called Lychen. A friend of Trudie's had already stayed with this family so it seemed like a good place to start.

So our adventure planning had begun......we were going to Germany!!

www.helpx.net/‎