Nightmare apartment? and the neighbors play Stasi!
The moment the 35-kilogram tilt-window broke loose from the hinges and crashed into my back, I sensed, "Somehow, that's not going to happen to this new apartment and me. It was 8 o'clock in the morning and I waited in the icy, empty apartment for the electrician, the biting smell of fresh paint in my nose. Well, with a window on my back. The carpenter, who had to move in the afternoon, did not want to believe that this "lintel" only left me with bruises.
In general: This apartment was a single construction site? and we seemed to be stalked by bad luck. When painting the doors, my husband and I both locked up in the kitchen and bedroom at the same time. For the work, we disassembled all the door handles in advance. Unfortunately, the doors then slammed by a heavy wind at the same time? and nobody could help each other.
When installing a shelf, we then put half of the electronics in the apartment to a standstill. Result: Several hundred Euro costs and a big new hole in the actually newly renovated wall. In the kitchen, we finally discovered that the fume hood only filtered and that the walls were so humid all around that the plaster crumbled against us. Not to mention broken plug sockets, rows of failed lighting elements, missing skirting boards and secretive areas left behind by the previous tenant.
Yes, all this sounds like a dump somewhere in a high-rise building in a problem area. In reality, we are talking about an apartment in a classy waterfront location and a monthly rent of 1400 euros for around 80 square meters of living space. But after the search for accommodation in this city had already determined our lives for more than half a year, we were exhausted when we were finally able to prevail against the big competition.
"Only this one construction day," we told each other, then we would have finally made it. And so we worked under high pressure one Saturday all our to-dos from the list. We visited DIY stores and Ikea for the very last time, scrubbed the rest of the paint off the floor, made room in the basement for the boxes that contained things we simply could not match. And then we should experience it: the first free Sunday for weeks of relocation!
By the way, now the stress is over
Sunday, 09:08. The phone vibrated. My husband had just drowsily drunk in the kitchen to feed the dog. I pushed the slider on my smartphone aside and opened a message on my phone.
Uff, not only the punctuation was disturbing! Falling asleep, I type in an answer:
"Hello, my neighbor, if you mean the moving noise up to and including Saturday, we can understand that and would like to ask for your understanding. Here are also all work done. If you mean this morning, we should talk to you personally about what noise they mean, because we could not understand that and thus could not prevent it. Nevertheless, we hope for a good neighborhood! Best regards?
So with a bad gut feeling, we spent the first free Sunday for a long time sneaking through the apartment and sticking pieces of felt underneath each piece of furniture. Chairs, drying racks, vases. Even the dog was supposed to wear socks, but resisted. And the unpleasant question remained: where did these people actually get my phone number from? We had never met!
Monday morning, 6:15. My husband had just got up and smeared a toast in the kitchen. He had not awakened me and I had not heard anything yet. Nothing. Until my phone broke abruptly from my dreams.
"Good morning, nice example of the noise that woke us again and ended the night for us. This is an old house and badly built, despite all we had never had problems with the many neighbors in your apartment and live here for years. You have not even heard the families, including babies. They are just loud in everything you do. We hear everything, your conversations, closets, plates, windows open and close, when you drop things on the floor, push the chairs (the last time we woke up yesterday morning) and go their very energetic. Every step of yours comes down here twice. This is annoying. It is a tenement house, there are also other living here and it is just not a house where you can move energetic and loud without disturbing others. Try to think about it and do something quieter, as I said earlier. At least we do not want to be woken up by you in the morning and participate in your everyday life after work. Thank you and of course we can talk about it personally if you prefer.?
If we had celebrated parties, sucked at three at night, singing according to Karoke ... I would have understood the woman - and above all - her help! But my way vigorously to go? To use plates? To open windows? To speak? THE TOILET TRAIN? How the hell should I live while avoiding these things? Still, I tried empathy. There had to be a reason for all this. So I answered prudently.
"Good morning, is it possible that your move over the weekend and the holiday, which admittedly was very unfortunate, but in this case unavoidable, made you over sensitive to the sounds of us? Sure, we will try to be even more considerate, but I do not think that you could operate a different flush toilet flush, which is why they must have heard this also in the previous tenants. Best regards?
But she did not mean the flush! This aspect was also emphasized in other news and in a handwritten, double-sided letter, which we found in the mailbox in the evening, with particular meticulousness. The letter was in English, perhaps to be perfectly prepared for a future hearing of the case at the International Court of Justice. She is not irritated either, the problem is only us. I suddenly felt sick. Was it even more violent? For days I barely dared to enter the bathroom because I imagined how two old, grumpy people stood on chairs with a glass on the wall and my ear on the glass and soaked up all my life's emotions. to turn all that heard into disgust. The bad karma pulled me down proverbially. I felt permanently like on the serving tray.
Nobody is ready for a personal confrontation
The same evening I stood, as I had long ago made it anyway, with a throbbing heart in front of the neighbor's door and rang the bell. Nobody opened. As well as on all following days. But you stole us shortly after the jogging shoes on the doorstep. And then threw it days later? as a warning? in front of our private cellar door.
That was the moment when I finally accepted: "Somehow that will not work with these neighbors and me? But I really like the apartment now. She had warned me. And we just did not want to hear.
