How Friday the 13th Kicked My Ass

This has been the weekend from hell, seriously.  I’m pretty sure that when I opened the door to our flat on Friday night that I walked through some sort of gateway that took me straight into Satan’s bathroom.

Let me go back and tell a little more about what was going on… You may want to grab a snack, this is going to be a long one!

A week or so ago I was sitting in my house, knitting and minding my own business, when I heard splashing noises.  They didn’t seem like normal house sounds so I got up to check it out, only to find the most foul brown water blasting up through the drain in my kitchen sink.  It was coming in so fast, also through the overflow opening. I panicked!

I called Xander at work and was all like OMG It’s going to overflow what do I DO!?! then he was all like BAIL!!! BAIL LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT, I’M COMING HOME!!

So, bail I did.  I grabbed a bowl and managed to get some water out just before the sink overflowed.  Then I proceeded to run my ass off between our kitchen sink and toilet to keep the water level down.

When he arrived home from work I was still bailing like there was no tomorrow.  The stench in the house was indescribable and he went upstairs to tell our neighbours to stop using water until we can get a plumber over.

Ok, I have to stop now and tell you a little about our lovely neighbours.  NOT SO LOVELY!

Remember our previous neighbours who left all the garbage downstairs and gave us rats and mice? Yeah the same one who came to our door to threaten us and kept using our phone.  Well, we finally got rid of them, and were so looking forward to having nice, normal neighbours upstairs for once.

We’re still waiting.

The dude who bought the flat is young, can’t be older than about 25, and he’s nice enough but a total slumlord.  The first tenants he put in were Mongolians, and they were quiet as mice.  The only problem is they multiplied like mice too.  It seemed like every time we went out the door there were different Mongolians coming and going, we never saw the same ones twice.  We still didn’t have a problem, until winter came and we were having issues with the radiator in our dining room. There are two flats below us and one above us, and all four of us are connected to the same heating pipe.  Xander de-aired ours and the ones below us but in order for the heat to work properly it needed to be de-aired at the very top.  This is where the problems started.

They would NOT open the door!  Even though we could hear them in there, no matter how long or how hard we banged on the door they would not open it.  This got to be extremely frustrating because we had no contact number for the guy who actually owns the flat and the VVE (homeowners association) wasn’t proving to be much help.

No lie, it took us almost 5 WEEKS to get into that flat to fix the heating!!  By that time our downstairs neighbour was pretty much ready to take an axe to their door, as she had no heating in her 3 year old’s bedroom and had to put an electric heater in there to keep him warm at night.

When Xander was finally let in, he saw that the flat was full of mattresses.  We had an entire colony of Mongolians living upstairs and they’d turned the place into a complete dump.  When we went to our next VVE meeting there was a lot of talk amongst the other owners in regards to the legality of the people who were living there and whether to phone the police and turn them in for having too many people living in the flat.  This is a major problem in Rotterdam at the moment, mostly with Polish workers who have come here.  Thankfully it soon became a non-issue as one day they were just… gone.  The landlord was in the flat fixing it up and once again we had hope that we’d have new, nicer neighbours.

WRONG.  More fucking Mongolians. I don’t know what it is with this guy and the Mongolians, but there was a collective groan throughout the building when we all realized that he had rented to them again.  It wasn’t the same ones though, and it appeared to just be a couple, so maybe they’d be better.

Now, let’s go back to day of the disgusting water.  There is massive blobs of rotten food coming up through our sink and I was up to my elbows in it.  I appear to have a stronger stomach than I ever thought because I still don’t know how I didn’t vomit during the entire thing.  Just when I’d get the water level down, it would all come rushing in again.  Cold water, hot water, all full of slimy grossness.  I couldn’t believe that there was so much food, and I knew it wasn’t coming from us.  We have a strainer on our sink that catches any bits before it goes down the drain, and we’d never had any problem in the years we’ve been living here.  There was no way it was a coincidence that these problems started just a matter of weeks after the Mongolians moved in.

Xander went upstairs to tell the Mongolians to stop using water and SURPRISE!!! They wouldn’t open the door!!  If I wasn’t so busy bailing all their crud out of my sink I would have been up and over those stairs in two seconds flat, I was THAT angry.

You have to imagine this scene, Xander is upstairs banging on the door telling them he can hear them in there, I’m legging it for all I’m worth between the kitchen and bathroom, slipping and sliding on the tile floors because they are wet and slippery from drippage, and I am screaming like a wild banshee for him to come and help me.

That’s when he nearly banged the door down, literally, like he nearly rocked that fucker right off it’s hinges.  MY MAN!  If I wasn’t up to my armpits in rancid water I’d have been really turned on.

Anyway, they finally opened up and were mighty pissy with him, because you know it’s totally rude of us to expect them to open their door?  Of course, like the others before them they spoke neither Dutch nor English, so after some loud, slow talking and hand signals he got the point across to them that they need to stop using water.

Oh, but wait!! They do speak English after all!!  Their response?  NOT MY PROBLEM!

Not your problem?  NOT YOUR PROBLEM!!  I will make it your problem you …. well, I won’t tell you the rest of what I said when he came down and told me their response.  If you know me you know that it involved a lot of swearing and big talk about all the ways I’d cause her pain.  I was so. pissed. off.

Xander then called the VVE, who actually were helpful this time around. They called a plumber who said they would be here before 5pm.  So we bailed and waited.  They apparently also contacted the Mongolians landlord, as he phoned us a few hours later and gave us his contact info so we could get in touch with him if we need him.

The plumber came, did their plumber thing and all seemed to be ok.

Side note, the plumber came with dried mud all over his shoes and when he was done working he asked for our vacuum and some cloths, and then cleaned the kitchen before he left.  WTF?!  Not only that but he was so incredibly friendly, chatty and pleasant…

I know, bizarre right?  I actually had to run to look out the window just to make sure I was still in the Netherlands.

Anyway, sweet relief.  The water stopped coming up our sink, our kitchen was cleaner than it was before the whole ordeal and life went back to normal.

That is, until Friday night.

This might be a good time to have a pee break if you need one, I’m really just about to get started.

I had plans with a friend to go into town and hang out, when I got home it was almost 11pm and when I walked in the door I felt a splash.  My first thought was that one of the dogs had peed on the floor, but when I turned on the lights a whole other nightmare opened up to me.  My flat was flooded.

WHY?  Why couldn’t it have just been dog pee?!!!

Xander was away for the weekend, I was all alone, it was the middle of the night and my flat was flooded.  Friday the 13th indeed!!

I didn’t even know where to start.  I had left the dishes from dinner on the countertop because I was in a rush to get to town before 6:30pm.  The dishwasher was still full with the clean dishes from the night before.  The kitchen, hallway and spare room were all flooded, the smell was horrendous and I knew I didn’t have enough towels in the house to take care of this job.  I also didn’t have a mop because I use a swiffer and a steam machine, neither of which would do me any good with this.

I wanted to sit down and cry, but it was late, the dogs still needed to be walked and I had to get down to business.  Right after I called Xander and freaked out.

As I got to work sopping up the water, Xander was on the other side of the country calling the VVE emergency number and the landlord upstairs.  The landlord did answer and say he’d come over but the VVE number? VOICE MAIL!  An emergency number and we get voice mail.  Give me strength…

This is the only photo I managed to take over the whole ordeal, from the first time the water appeared.  This is what was left in our dishwasher after I bailed the water out of the sink.  It’s actually quite clear and free of crud, compared to what was in the sink earlier.  Still disgusting though…

All my drawers were full of water, everything in them had been stewing in it, the dishwasher had flooded, and I didn’t dare open the washer.  It was an absolute nightmare. I got the sink empty and somehow managed to get all of the water up off the floor by about 1am. All I could do was put the stuff from the drawers in bags and put them on the balcony to be dealt with later.  In the meantime the landlord from upstairs showed up and went to visit the neighbours, telling them not to use water.  He then came down and helped me get the baseboards out from under the cupboards so I could get the water out from under there.

Of course, the Mongolians, in a quest to consistently be complete assholes, did not stop using their water.  So I spent the entire night completely tense and running to the kitchen to bail the water before it managed to flood us again.  The – ENTIRE – night.  Do Mongolians never sleep?!  I’m sure those mofos stayed up just to purposely use water to piss me off.  If it weren’t for my other lovely neighbours trying to sleep, I’d have brought the roof down in this place.

By the time Xander arrived home the next morning, I was a frazzled, angry mess.

When he arrived the kitchen was pretty much clean, but the water was still coming up.  This time though?  It wasn’t food, it was SHIT.  When they flushed the toilet upstairs it came up into our kitchen sink, toilet paper and all.  I have never been so disgusted in my life, but still had no choice but to get in there and bail it out.

Xander, again, phoned the landlord to come over and tell them to not use ANY water. Not the sink, not the toilet, nothing.  True to his word, he came and stayed there until the plumber arrived at about 10:30am.  I recall yelling something from the sidelines about if she has a problem with it she’s free to come scoop her own shit out of my sink.

When the plumbers arrived it was the same guy as the last time, I had to stop myself from running at him movie style and leaping into his arms, I was THAT happy to see him.  When I told his co-worker, who came in before him, that we were getting their toilet water into our sink, he said that wasn’t possible.  It wasn’t until they were both there and asked the upstairs landlord to go up and flush the toilet that they saw it with their own eyes and finally believed me.

They were also shocked and disgusted.  According to them, plumbing is not supposed to be done that way and it may even be illegal now.  This is an older building though, and nothing surprises me with it anymore.

They went up to the roof, did their plumber thing and now we have pipes that drain faster than I have ever seen them.

I’m still nervous to leave the house though, and I’m due to meet another friend in town in three hours.  I’m afraid.  If I come home and find more flooding, please visit me in prison.

Anyway, after the plumbers left Xander went to the supermarket and bought some really strong bleach, and washed the kitchen down with it.  Thank god I have a man who is willing to help out around the house because I didn’t have anything left in me to give to that kitchen right then.  He also started cutting the carpet out of the spare room, as there was no salvaging it after what it had been through.  We planned on taking it up anyway so this just gives us the incentive to finally renovate that room like we planned.

By this time I was so drained, I think I just sat and cried for a minute.  When Xander was done cleaning up we both crawled into bed and had a much needed nap.  As I went to sleep I tried not to think of all the laundry and other things that needed to be done when we got up.

Also, just to make an already crappy situation worse, when we got up and tried to run the dishwasher to clean it out, it wouldn’t work.  We were stuck having to wash everything by hand, which really sucks.  All of my Tupperware is still in a garbage bag waiting for the dishwasher to be fixed.  I honestly just can’t be arsed.  I also just found out that it will cost anywhere from 100-225 euro to have someone come look at it.

So that was my Friday the 13th weekend.  I will never underestimate it’s powers again. Not ever.

There is a silver lining to this story though, the landlord upstairs said that the Mongolians were so pissed off they said they are leaving this week. The poor darling, my heart bleeds for them, really.  He also that he is done with the flat and when they are gone, he’s selling it.  HALLEE-FUCKING-YUYA!

Who will our next neighbours be, I wonder.  Will we finally get the upstairs neighbours we’ve been dreaming of, or is that flat really just doomed to always be filled with psychos and assholes?

Time will tell I guess… but if Mongolians buy it, I’m torching the place.