Vdull footsteps can be heard again above. Next door two children are romping through the apartment and it sounds as if they are throwing themselves against the wall at full speed. It’s shortly before eight o’clock and I want to take my time to drink my mint tea before my morning shift in the home office starts. But start the day in peace – I can forget that.
I did not think that I would become one of those who gets upset about the neighbors. Isn’t that just done by people who have nothing better to do than keep a record of who leaves the house and when, or who doesn’t sort the garbage properly?
But in the past few months, home has become more of a place of retreat than ever: in the lockdown, people learned, studied, worked, ate, played sports and met virtual friends, and even now not everything is happening again. But when the time in your own four walls drives you to white heat because someone comes up with the idea of building shelves or organizing a karaoke competition (at least that’s what it sounds like), it becomes difficult. But you don’t want to be the philistine who rings the doorbell and asks for silence. And moving is no fun either – especially since nobody can guarantee that your new neighbors will be calmer. Spending the whole day with earplugs is also not a solution. So what to do
I take my courage together
I, more of the introverted type, eat the anger into myself first. Chocolate is supposed to release happiness hormones. After a whole blackboard, it’s still loud in the apartment above me – and a little sick. When looking for distraction, I land on YouTube and discover videos of people who share my fate. Some report unsuccessful attempts at confrontation or give tips on how to behave. An American has actually bought a remote control with which he can control all of his neighbors’ devices. I really don’t want to go that far.
A popular method on the platform – which I had already tried intuitively and thrown overboard – is to take revenge by getting louder than the neighbors themselves. It didn’t work for me; on the contrary, I was just annoyed with myself. In other videos, the topic is artistically processed by users converting their experiences into comedy. The latter seems a bit exaggerated to me, so I take all my courage and go one floor up.
Of course, a woman lives upstairs who couldn’t have been more personable. When she opens the door, I take a short breath and ask her to be a little quiet. For a moment she looks at me, a little surprised. But then the words just spray out of her: she works during the day and only finds time very late in the evening to assemble her new furniture. She is very sorry and will hurry up. So now I stand there and I feel like the last fool. Of course I understand that, I say, and that’s why I offer my help. She declines with thanks and I go back to my apartment a little ashamed.
A rosé as an excuse
Almost a month after I knocked for the first time, however, I feel compelled to speak to her again. But instead of speaking to her, I spontaneously decide to put a note with cookies in front of her front door. The next day, a small bottle of rosé was waiting for me in front of my door. So I don’t have to be one of those people who storm the neighbors with rage and mutate into a bourgeois neighbors fright – but I don’t just have to accept everything either.
Has there been idyllic silence in the house since then? No, but I can live with that. And if it gets too loud, I’ll just have to bake cookies again.
.