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Help out with daily family life and explore medieval Bruges

5.0
(79 reviews)79

The experience

We are a busy, 5 person family, open to welcoming some help with gardening, cleaning, housekeeping, maintenance, painting, ...
We enjoy cultural exchanges: we have hosted hundreds of visitors in home exchange, Ukranian refugees. We are generous by nature, and we expect the same of people staying with us. For this position we prefer single travellers as we don't have enough work for couples. Exceptions can be discussed.

What you offer

20 hours of help per week

Cleaning: Help clean the kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms and common areas.

Housekeeping: Help with changing the bed linens and general housekeeping.

Building & Repairing: Help with a wide range of repairs or building.

Gardening: Help grow plants and cultivate gardens

Additional fee required

Amount: € 2 Per day

Fee pays for: Benefits for travelers and Materials for volunteer activities

Description: We provide water, WiFi and we cover the first weekly 40 kWh of electricity consumed in the guesthouse (which is for your private use only). To give you an idea: that is more than half of what as we consume in the main house, four times the size, with a family of four people... It should be enough, but if you use more than that, we will ask you to pay us back (price +/- 0,3 euro / kWh, the guesthouse has a separate counter)

What you get

3 days off per week

Private Room: You will have a bed in a private room. In other words, a room just for you.

Dinner: You are entitled to a free dinner, every day of your stay.

Free Laundry: You can use our laundry room freely.

Bikes at your disposal: You can use our bikes any time you want.

Pick Up: We will pick you up when you arrive, and take you to our property.

Use our equipped kitchen: Feel free to use our kitchen and make your own delicious food.

Fast Internet Access: High-speed internet for you to work remotely

Dedicated Workspace: Specific space for you to work remotely

Requirements

Beginner English or Beginner Galician

Over 23 years old

Only hosts solo volunteers (doesn’t accept couples or partners)

European Union Passport

United States visa or citizenship

Travel insurance

What's not included

Flights, Travel Insurance, Internal Transportation and Visa

Program Details

We enjoy experiencing diverse input, be it from people in different age group (we are in our early 40s) or from people from different backgrounds… It helps to keep an open mind :-)

We are very close to the town of Bruges, medieval treasure that is most worth exploring off tourist season. The proximity of the town also offers many possibilities to connect with travellers from all over the world. Brussels, Ghent, Lille are all within an hour; Amsterdam and London are three hours away…

We offer plenty of occasion to improve your French, Dutch or English (I am a native Dutch speaker and a French/English teacher).

My father and husband have a very small brewery; not commercialised but nevertheless interesting for beer enthousiasts…

My father is a retired builder, sculptor, letter carver, blacksmith and allround handyman (he practically built our home) who will happily share his (impressive) workshop and skill with you, if that’s your thing…

Activities & Shift

We open to guests helping in our busy family life: mostly cleaning, housekeeping and maintenance, but also cooking, gardening or dog-walking will be helpful. My parents are retired and live about 9 kilometres away. They are getting older and finding it more difficult to manage their beautiful but big house & garden. Some occasional help there (cleaning or gardening) will be greatly appreciated, in which case we will of course take you there and come get you after. We think 4 hours a day is an absolute maximum, it will very often be less! Our previous volunteer gave us as feedback she felt a bit guilty for not being given more work... We did not mind, but we appreciate flexibility in this field (not being fussy about an extra hour if you often do a lot less...)

Rules

We provide one meal a day (a hot meal), which can be had with us in the main house (usually in the evenings) or in the guesthouse, whatever has your preference. Other meals are to be provided by and for yourself (baker and supermarket are nearby, there's a small fridge in the guesthouse, a cooker, a coffee machine, ...)

Working hours can be spread evenly over the week, if you prefer this, or they can be fitted into four days, which will give you 3 days off and the possibility of exploring... We don't have a preference for what days of the week will be working days / days off. We are flexible.

Smoking is only allowed outside the guesthouse.

We expect travellers who are independent, flexible, respectful, discrete and experienced.

Quite frankly: we have not had the best experiences with the youngest of our guests, not because they intentionally lacked, but because they had no idea of how to run a household, little knowlegde of cleaning or housekeeping and an unrealistic expectation of the cost of life (meaning: they started to run short of money halfway through their stay and have been expecting us to back them up) We don't blame them for being young and never having lived an independent life, away from their parents, but we will be more strict in future as we feel it is not fair and not doable for us to make up for it.