Your guest is as good as mine? Hopefully not.

Despite living in Germany for three and a half years now, we’ve been surprised how many guests we haven’t had (I’m smelling my armpits right now and they’re ok, so …).

This year, though, I think a light went on, as we’re already set to host at least four groups of friends and families by August.

However, the first guest we hosted this year left, well, “much to be desired” would be a gross understatement.

Like most guests, his visit started off innocuous enough; polite, helpful and even providing a breath of fresh air in what has seemed like a ridiculously long winter.

Initially, I was somewhat concerned that he didn’t really articulate any sort of plan like, “I’m hoping to stay for a week to 10 days,” etc, but people plan differently, so I brushed it aside. However, as his stay chugged into Day 3, more red flags started to pop up.

He would stay up all hours of the night and then sleep all day, snoring on the couch as Molly was trying to write articles; he then moved his work space into the area where Molly usually set up shop; he never left the house; and rarely offered to help clean up.

Then we started to notice dwindling levels in various bottles of alcohol by about Day 5. As I headed out of town for a ski trip that Friday, Molly set aside a few bottles of booze as a concession that he not touch any of the rest  of the liquor cabinet (some of which were gifts or bottles we were saving for special occasions).

As an aside, any time you have to ask a guest not to drink all your alcohol, or consider locking most of the interior doors, that's a huge warning sign. At the foundation of having guests is trust, right?

So when we came back Sunday night and noticed empty bottles stacked up next to the sink, there was only one thing to do: give him the boot. 

Here’s a list of the damage we discovered over the few days:

1 x 750 mL red wine
1 x 700 mL Cointreau
300 mL Appenzeller
1 x 750 mL blackberry wine
1 x 700 mL apfel liquor
1 x 700 mL pear schnaps
1 bottle peppermint schnaps
350 mL vodka
175 mL Yeni Raki
3-4 small bottles of wine
6 mini bottles of absinth
assorted mini vodka bottles
leftovers from bottles of Jamison, Jack Daniels
2 West Coast IPAs
9 Natty Lights
7-10 .5L German beers
(Note: These are only the bottles we found. I'm guessing there were more.)

In some ways, I guess I should have thanked him – he killed the remainder of that 12-er I bought for the ND-Alabama game that no one wanted to drink. Then again, he took down Molly's prized Appenzeller (a relatively rare, delicious Swiss digestive) and the pair of IPAs I was nursing until I could score reinforcements. 

Looking back though, it wasn’t so much that he was inconsiderate, drank liquor he never intended to replace, or even worse, bogarted liquor we specifically asked him not to drink – I guess at the root of it, he was a guest who didn’t give a damn about the people who were putting him up.

It’s weird, though, because as the hosts, we had this almost guilty feeling for having to kick him out, even though he definitely deserved it. Perhaps that's why we drove him to a station 15 miles from our house so he could catch a cheaper train to Nuremberg, or let him stay an extra night to get his plans in order. 

And though we’re not shutting our doors to folks looking to crash any time soon, we are more aware of those telltale signs of a bad guest.