I love Window Swap. I wrote about swapping my window for a view of the pyramids a few days ago, but now I’m back again, because there’s so much more to it.

Thanks to COVID, we’re all kinda stuck in our country of residence indefinitely, for now. Who knows when we will be able to travel, and even if borders open, will we feel safe travelling for leisure. What do we do with all that wanderlust? That’s where Window Swap comes in. It’s aspirational travelling, in the imagination. I love how it instantly transports me to another home, another country. Yet, there usually isn’t much going on at the window view. It’s really, really mundane. But I guess that’s the beauty of it. Just like the slow movement. This is slow entertainment. 

Mundantainment.

I spent most of the time writing this post with a window view to Harmut’s window of a lotus pond in Germany, very Zen like, with the sound of a stream of water dropping into the pond. Occasionally, a bird flies into the scene. Then, after I got a little bored of the peace and tranquility, I move to Taylor’s window, of a cross junction in Brooklyn, USA. It’s almost as if I live there in that second floor apartment, with the open windows looking down to all the traffic, cyclists and pedestrians going through the cross junction. It’s near to life and liveliness, yet sufficiently distant from it. An occasional Harley bike punctures the scene with it’s massive engine. Cyclists gliding by – it seems like a nice day out for a ride. Lulu’s window to Tokyo brings me back to my own travels in Japan. It could very well be a window view from one of the Airbnbs that I lived in. Quiet neighbourhood, locals walking briskly and quietly down the streets. The familiar iron-on-iron grinding of the Tokyo subway trains. Then, a few windows down, a lovely window cove out to a canal in Amsterdam. Initially, nothing much. Idyllic. No boats. Then all of a sudden, the canal bridge lifts and a looong barge floats by. That’s beauty of these window swaps. You can’t fast forward, so you never know what ya gonna get. By that principle, you also get all the half-weird scenes, like Geoffbadger’s window in Halesowen UK, where there’s like 5 badgers feeding in bowls in what seems to be his backyard, at night. Does he rear badgers as pets? Or just feeding wild ones who drop by his yard at night? Is that even his real name? How curious and mysterious! 

And just like that, I visited five different countries already. It’s strangely calming…… why? I wonder if that’s in stark contrast to the types of content in Youtube, where it drains you of your attention. While with Window Swap, you’re not really watching intently. It’s more like a scene for daydreaming. Or a meditation, almost. You drift in and out of the picture before you. It’s different, and refreshing like a glass of ice cold water for your mind.

I can’t wait to see the new window views that people are uploading to it.