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You choose: swapping apartment for apartment or house for house. Our homes are surrounded by nature, yet a short tram or cab ride to the quaint, historical center of Bratislava, full of culture, music and fun seasonal happenings.

Our home is located on a 'Little Carpathian Wine Route' (https://slovakia.travel/en/little-carpathian-wine-route), surrounded by mountains and vineyards. Hence, there are many wine festivities happening in our little suburb of Bratislava (called Raca) on a regular basis, mostly on Fridays and Saturdays. Many cellars and wine makers you can visit on foot and enjoy your evening stroll. The house itself is over 6000 SF, with a large backyard. My husband also built a vert skateboard ramp (coming from sunny Santa Monica), that's adjacent to the long driveway. We have an indoor pool, which we mainly use in the summer, as we don't heat it in the winter (it became too expensive), but if you want to strengthen your immune system, you are welcome to it even in the winter ;-) There are grocery stores a short walk from the house, along with pharmacies, post office, fresh market, restaurants and a few cafeterias that offer nice warm drinks and freshly made pastries. There is also a pretty big fitness center 5 minute walk from our house. It's a pretty laid back part of town. If you'd like a more busy atmosphere, you can take a tram (again, 5 minute walk from the house), that take you to the old town (about 15-20 minute train ride). If you like going for walks in nature, you just unlock our back gate and find yourself surrounded by vineyards, with many walking routes. If you'd like to go on further, you can continue walking upwards into the beautiful forest of Small Carpathian Mountains and walk for hours and hours on end. If you prefer mountain biking, there is a lot of mark routes for that as well. My husband uses his "one wheel" :) We have four seasons in Slovakia - when people ask me to compare it to some state in the US, I'd say it's very close to Connecticut or New Hampshire weather all year around. Warm in the summer, cold in the winter. Lots to do here during both seasons. In the summer you can enjoy the beauties of nature, the old town, the rivers and surrounding hiking trails. You can also take day trips to Vienna or Budapest, or 2-3 day trip to Prague, if you are so inclined. There is an amazing network of local transportation in Bratislava and unlike in L.A., a lot of local people use it on a daily basis, in order to avoid traffic or dealing with parking in town. Danube river offers boat trips up and down the river - again, you can take a speed boat to Vienna or Budapest. In the winter, you can go snow sledding or visit Slovak mountains, where there is so much to explore. The most beautiful mountain ranges are Hight Tatra Mountains, Low Tatra Mountains, Slovak Paradise and one of my favorites are "Janosik" caves or "Janosikove Diery". We also have a lot of caves, that can be visited throughout the year, besides the winter months. If yo are into history, Slovakia is one of the countries with the most castles per person. 180 kingdoms were in Slovakia in the past. Nowadays, you can still visit 120 of them, either ruins or good conditioned ones. One of my favorites is Bojnice Castle (https://www.travelguide.sk/eng/tourist-attractions/zamok-bojnice_5_1.html), but there are many more beautiful ones. If you enjoy skiing, one of our favorite places to fo to is Jasna (https://www.jasna.sk/en/resort/resort-info/resort-information), which takes us about 3 hours to drive to. There are a lot of different skiing resorts to explore as well. A lot of local people like to ski in Austrian Alps as well, which is about the same distance to get to as to Slovakian Mountains. The trains are also widely used here, in case you don't feel like renting a car while going on a trip. Bratislava, too, has an airport (BTS), which can take you places like Poprad (High Tatra Mountains) or Kosice (another beautiful city in the eastern part of the country).

Our house consist of two main floors (with an extra one down below, but that's mainly used for washing clothes, playing ping-pong, drums or hitting golf balls. It also has a trash room and garages.) You can access the main part of the house either using stairs, or a ramp runs along the side of the house. Main floor has a hallway, half a bath, large kitchen with an eating nook, living room with fireplace, dining table, piano and fireplace, main bathroom and master bedroom as well as the indoor swimming pool. Second floor had two additional bedrooms and a second living room/play room with a big screen TV (Netflix included), outdoor terrace with a beautiful view and an extra bedroom that would be locked during your visits, where we would store our belongings. There is a bathroom with shower upstairs as well and an additional half a bath with WC.

In the winter, the heat needs to be check and adjusted periodically to ensure it runs smoothly and provides warm water (easy, we'll instruct you how to do that). We also filter the pool once a week, even when we don't use it in the winter, so if you could do that during your stay, it would be greatly appreciated. Again, it's easy and takes about 3 minutes, but it needs to be done, so the water in the pool stays fresh.

Public swimming pool in gorgeous mountain setting (in summers)...in winters we ice skate there sometime ;-). Grocery stores, cafeterias, restaurants, pharmacies. Hiking trials right behind the house. Local transportation (trams & buses) to get you to old town and other parts of the city. American beer pub with darts and other games, about 7 min walk from the house. Wineries. 3 churches - 2 Catholic and 1 Evangelic.

You can fly to Vienna, Austria (VIE) and take a 50-60 EUR cab, or take a bus (takes about an hour) to town and then hail a 6-9 EUR cab to our home). The bus ticket is around 15 EUR per person one way, sometimes less. We use two companies: https://www.slovaklines.sk/en/world/destinations-and-experiences/vienna and https://regiojet.com.

VIE (Vienna) and BTS (Bratislava)

walking distance to local shops and tramps, buses or taxis around town

I can meet for a drink, catch up and be a friend :)