floodings

i was meant to blog much more. but again life had caught up with me and didn't provide me with the time to write at all.
have been travelling a lot lately and just came back from africa. on some days i wonder whether there is much of a difference between africa and russia. yeah yeah, i know, things are even harsher in africa, but the first-world-moments are rare in this country.

like with floodings in your apartment. within less than one year, my apartment managed to twice flood the ones below it. i suppose i am not very liked by my downstairs-neighbours...
this is pretty normal in this country. many people have flooding problems in their apartments. for all sorts of reasons, bad material (like using the wrong screw - that was my first flooding incident), bad pipes, bad renovation/installation (that was my second flooding incident), etc.

so i had my bridget-jones-moment. it was about one o'clock in the morning and i had just come out of the shower, wrapped in a towel. and the screw burst and with it the pipe got loose and the whole water of the city was unleashed into my apartment. at least that's how it felt like. i was banging on the doors of my neighbours to get some help, still in my towel, but no one even opened the door. lovely. the waterfall in my bathroom lasted for about one hour until the sanitary guys finally managed to shut it all off. i was told afterwards that i had flooded 9 floors below me... i don't dare imagine how those flats looked like, i just remember mine, water literally all over, in every corner of every room... my 70-something-year old babushka-neighbour was helping me get rid of the water in my flat, soaking up probably hundreds of liters of water, until the early hours of the night. and after some 3 hours of sleep, i had to find some dry clothes and go to a really important meeting at work...

the second time was less bad but meaner. i went to bed and slept my sweet dreams all through the night and was woken up by the sanitary guys screaming at me why i am, again, flooding the building. turns out, sometimes throughout the night, when i was sleeping, again my bathroom decided to go nuts and pour some water down... just great. one goes innocently to bed at night and wakes up in the morning just to find a whole new catastrophy in one's place.

of course my landlady was screaming at me as well. russian landladies are a whole own chapter, or blog.

now, my apartment is not the regular russian type, that is, it is big, nice, newly renovated and i surely pay enough money for my little luxury. yet not even in such a place one can be secure from all sorts of things going wrong. i know so many people who have had floodings in their apartments here in russia, yet i know no one to whom this has happened in the west.

in moments like this, i go crazy in this place. perhaps i should start a petition for a right to floodless-living in russia...