Just in time for Halloween: Neighbors from hell

So we hate our neighbors.

First, somebody cut off a bunch of branches off the birch trees in our back-yard. Which, would have been totally fine if they didn't just kind of leave them there on the ground and they've been turning into dirt for about 5 months or so. We live on the first floor and now our entire bedroom view constitues of a random mess of fallen tree matter. Nobody seems to intend to clear things out.

Then, there was the teenage girl upstairs who celebrated her parents' going off on vacation by throwing rawdy chalga parties for a week. She would blast her music up until 2 in the morning and have a possy of friends run up and down the stairs ALL NIGHT LONG. We didn't want to complain, because yes, we ARE married but we are NOT LAME. And we could totally relate to her unexpected and short-lived happiness. At some point, however, both Kyle and I had had it and I ran upstairs to tell her to fuckin' turn her music down already. Like, WAY down. Oh, was it loud?!, she asked.

Then, there was the annoying girl who worked in the office right next door. Every time she had to make a phone call, she would take it to the balcony. Our shared balcony, that is. And there she is, yapping away with friends about her evil mother and what not and on the other side...well, there sits my husband, paging a small German edition of Kant's Third Critique. And wondering if he'd get us in too much trouble if he snapped her neck into two.

More recently, we went away and came back and found a piece of shit on our doormat. Yeah, that's right. Shit. As I am investigating, another neighbor walks by and says to me, Yeah. It's shit. A cat walked into the building one night and slept on your doormat. SHE made that poo. Geee, I'm thinking, Thanks for letting me know. Next time, when a stinky drunk person makes their way to YOUR doormat, I will make sure I tell you all about it!!! AFTER I'd brought them more beer.

They ALWAYS STARE at us. I KNOW we are a bit of a novelty around here. I mean, this neighborhood is mostly inhabited by old folks with even older dogs. And here we are: neither old nor pet-equipped. Oh, yeah, and we speak a foreign language to each other most of the time. But come ON, we've lived here for about 5 months now...if you want to know more, just ask. Don't just STARE.

And a couple of days ago we found out that somebody had tried to break into our apartment.

Now, I'm thinking...what are we to do?

1. Talk to the building manager: who has the miraculous ability to only make himself present when it's time to collect the management fees which he then spends on paying the cleaning lady. Which does not sound right to me, mostly because I LIVE in the building and have not once seen "Da Cleaning Lady" or observed the fruits of her labor. Mostly, I smell her absence which seems to materialize in the form of cat-poo on my doormat.

2. Write a note and post it on the building door: and ask our neighbors to please: a) clear out the birch branches from the backyard, b) observe some reasonable quiet hours, c) clean after their smelly pets and d) FUCKING STOP STARING AT US. But, seriously, what kind of response would that trigger?! Somebody will write САМО ЛЕВСКИ on our note and then somebody would correct that to read КУР ЗА ЛЕВСКИ instead. And that would probably be it.

3. We could call the police: but we are people who more or less believe in the principles of liberal democracy which include, but are not limited to allowing people to be total fuckin' assholes as long as that does not infringe on other people's rights to be even bigger assholes, should they desire to do so.

4. Blog about them: in the hope that other people reading this would share more neighbor-from-hell horror stories we could then all laugh about. And then, maybe, together figure out what the best revenge would be.

For now, following through with Option 4 and always making sure we SLAM our door as hard as we can. You can always count on passive aggression to shake things up a little bit, no?