Oh my... When I got my first booking I thought: Oh no, French people! I have lived next to Strasbourg for 19 years, I am a professional translator for French and I do speak the language without any accent... However, I do not speak French fluently anymore and I did not have a lot of practice speaking it in the last couple of years either!
Well, at least I managed to write e-mails with Christiane and Jean-Marie which was not that easy for me. I learned from these e-mails that they wanted to make a stop in Heidelberg on their way back from their two-week vacation to their home town of Troyes (France).
The booking was made for September 16, 2011, however, they were not able to tell me exactly when they would arrive. As I wanted to go to the office at the day of their arrival, it was not good at all that they called me the night before their arrival to tell me they would be arriving around noon... Great!
Well, I didn't go to work the next day but stayed home and translated from my home office. Around lunch time, the two arrived. The greeting was friendly, however, as I was desperately looking for the right words in French we didn't talk that much. It was even hard to explain to Christiane and Jean-Marie what they were allowed to use in my apartment.
As I wanted to stay home during my first visitors' stay, I told them I'd be at home all day to open the door for them as they wanted to go to town later. About an hour after they arrived, they took the tram to town in order to walk through Heidelberg and to visit the castle.
They returned at about 7 pm and again we tried to talk with each other but gave up after a couple of minutes... Well, you can't have everything. At least they were friendly and tried to communicate with me.
They were awake quite early the next morning and we started another round of "talking" in the kitchen. At about 9 o'clock they left for their home town.
A couple of days later I received an e-mail telling me I had received an evaluation. I immediately clicked on the link to read it. The evaluation was ok, I guess, but I only got 2 out of 5 points for cleanliness and equipment. I cannot think of any reason why they should give me that few points for cleanliness but they were at least right about the equipment as I didn't think about it in time that I only have a small blanket with a pillow for guests. That was the reason why I had to give them a huge bedspread as a blanket and pillows that didn't match... They obviously didn't like that :(
So, I decided to go to IKEA in order to buy some cheap blankets and pillows, some duvet covers and sheets because then I would have stuff that's cheap, looks good and matches. And it I could even set it off against tax liability.
I will inform you about my next visitor after I posted about my visit at IKEA :)
And now you'll even get to see a picture of Christiane & Jean-Marie:
