Au pairing - Your best travel choice during the pandemic: 4 reasons why

Travel is great. Especially when you're young. It's exciting. It's fun. And it lets you grow and learn and develop in ways you never dreamed were possible.  

But there's a problem. The world is in the middle of a pandemic and travel is not as simple or as safe as it was a year ago. Jumping from hostel to hostel and getting one cheap flight after another just doesn't make sense at the present time.

An au pair stay, on the other hand, lets you get to a new part of the world, experience it deeply and at the same time follow a routine which gives you more protection and stability during this crazy time. Here are 4 travel benefits of being an au pair that have become especially relevant during the corona pandemic:

1. You stay safe in a home away from home

As an au pair you find a home in a new part of the world. This gives you a base that lets you discover new things and gives you those great travel benefits (new language, new culture, new world, new friends, new family). At the same time, living with a family is one of the best ways for you to keep you safe while you travel during the pandemic. As local people, your host family will have inside knowledge about what the real risks in the foreign setting are and how to handle them best. And they will have a direct interest in helping you stay safe. 

2. You make the most of the pandemic 

Lots of young people are frustrated by the restrictions that have come with the coronavirus pandemic. An au pair stay doesn't make everything perfect, but it does let you turn everyday life into something special by living it in another place. We all are forced to wait in some sense until a vaccine has been developed and the threat of the coronavirus is brought under control. When you go abroad as an au pair, you're having a great adventure even though there is a pandemic and many possibilities are on hold.

3. You get deep immersion

Instead of wandering from place to place and having multiple destinations with a classic globe-trotting agenda, the possibility of deep immersion in one new country is seeming increasingly attractive to many young people. When you choose a host country as an au pair, you have a destination that gives you all the advantages of experiencing something new and different. And at the same time you get the time and space to learn the language of your host country and really understand and appreciate a different culture and way of living. 

4. You have real experience, real learning - really easy

As an au pair you're living your daily life in a foreign place. That means you find out about shopping and food and traffic and jokes and restaurants and climate and media and people and a hundred other things that make up a whole new culture through your own experience. Not only that, you're taking a first big step into international living - without having to find an apartment in a foreign city, or apply for a job, or look for an internship with a foreign company, or pay a lot of money to set up a new life.

By teaming up with a host family in the foreign country of your dreams, you come into that new situation with a set of benefits that other young travellers can only dream about:

• A place to stay (for free!) in your destination country
• All your meals and other daily needs covered
• Some pocket money to help with expenses

Bottom line: An au pair stay is a special exchange

Of course, you're not getting all of this for nothing. Au pairs work for these great benefits in a win-win exchange with a host family.

You join a host family and become a member of the family team - helping with childcare, developing a relationship with both the kids of the family as a sort of older sister or brother, and with the parents as a young adult who has become a temporary family member. 

There's lots of responsibility and it's not always easy. But that is also a key part of this special travel experience.

By taking on this important role in a local family, you simply get more: a firm base in a foreign country, great language learning opportunities, a chance to make new friends with people from around the world. And right now it lets you see the world and start your international experience - even though we're living through a global pandemic! (But only if you take that first step and set up your profile to find a host family.)