After I had hosted my first Postdoctoral candidate, Angeliki, from the end of September until the beginning of October because she was looking for an Apartment for one year my next postdoctoral candidate guest was Héctor from Buenos Aires. He stayed in my living room from 2 to 8 December. Just like Angeliki, Héctor only booked the room for a couple of nights as he thought it couldn't be that hard to find an apartment in Heidelberg. However, he totally underestimated the apartment search and it was even harder for him as he was only looking for an apartment for three months.
Finding an apartment in Heidelberg for one year is already almost impossible (as it is finding an apartment at all...) but for only three months?! He would have to cancel the contract directly after concluding it due to the three month cancellation period...
Well, I also want to tell you a bit about Héctor: he is a postdoctoral candidate in philosophy with a focus on German idealism. He is in Germany every year and he speaks German very well.
As he has a cat of his own (who is considerably older than Leonie and lives at his parents' house), he got along very well with my cat. However, she sometimes acted like a real beast and scratched him but as she is still very young she cannot yet estimate her strength when she's playing. However, she's maybe just a little bitch.
Unfortunately, I had been away a lot those days (I had been in Munich, for example, for which trip I will write another post about carpooling) and had not been there when Héctor looked at apartments. On the morning of 8 December he told me that he finally talked to the university about his search and they arranged for him to get a room in Rohrbach which was not that cheap and not too big but would be totally sufficient for the 3 months.
As he had forgotten an adapter at my place and Leonie put one of my Christmas tree ornaments into one of his bags without him noticing it, we hoped we could meet each other some time (we did actually run into each other on his last day in Germany, so I could give him the adapter back).
And now you will get another chance to have a look at one of my former guests:
