In an earlier post, I told you about our apartment building and the truly evil neighbors beneath us. Today, I would like to tell you about the batshit insane ones living in the apartment directly above, and why I hate them with every ventricle of my American heart.
First off, let’s meet the couple: Off-Medication Astrid and her henpecked husband, Timur the Castrated. At first glance, they may look perfectly ordinary. Astrid is a young German woman, pretty, with long blonde hair. Timur is Turkish, and he has that adorably pathetic look of a little boy who has just zipped his pecker up in his fly for the first time. But if you take a longer look — really stab them to death with your eyes — you’ll see they are far from normal.
Timur the Castrated, as the name suggests, has only one major flaw: deficient scrotitude. He doesn’t have the eggs to divorce his crazy wife, but that’s not what infuriates me about him. No, I want to pick up a newspaper off the street, roll it up real tight, and pimp slap him for marrying her in the first place. I’m sure his parents warned him about her, but if they didn’t, I’d like to mega-Turk pimp slap the shit out of them too.
No, the real problem in our apartment building is Off-Medication Astrid. If you pass her in the stairwell, she will give you a toothy grin that lets you know she calms the voices in her head by detonating feeder mice in the microwave. You can just see the crazy inside her. But all one really needs to appreciate her madness is a pair of functioning eardrums. This woman is loud, and by loud, I mean the noise she generates passes through the floorboards above our home office, cuts through the music in my headphones, and punctures the bony zenith of my skull.
Astrid seems to have exactly two behavior modes: Heavy Construction and Murderous Harpy. While in Harpy Mode, she screams, calls her husband names, cries, throws shit and then screams some more. While in Construction Mode, she is hammering, drilling and painting something with roller brushes. My wife and I have absolutely no idea what she is building.
My wife once said, “They don’t like each other. I think they are building a wall.”
I found this hilarious, but have since come up with an alternative scenario: I think Astrid fancies herself an artist. Either that, or she is constructing a Hate-Fueled Nuclear Fusion Engine, which she will one day use to split the earth in twain and entice the Devil himself to come forth and take his rightful seat upon a throne of ashes.
Get this: Astrid was once drilling something so loudly above our heads, one of the horrible neighbors in the apartment beneath us shouted up at her to stop. I felt like I was in the middle row of Hollywood Squares, trapped on all sides by senile actors from the 60s trying to out-lunatic each other. Holy flying monkeyshit I hate our neighbors. Every single one of them. Thank Christ my wife and I are looking for a new place to live. The thought of finding a house of our own is my one true hope — one which soothes me to sleep every night as I suck my thumb and snuggle my blanket like a spiteful little baby.
Oh God, My Wife Is German. 
Oh dear, sounds like you guys REALLY have neighbours from hell. Hope you find a different place SOON!
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Try moving into an Altbau — walls and floors are 14 inches thick; ceilings are 14 ft high. It does alot to mitigate sound (although, of course, I’ve found being old and half deaf very helpful, too).
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Just go up and ask them to see, what they are building. ;) Ask them to come for a cup of coffee. They might be very bice at second glance.
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That is probably a very good idea, Ulrike. However, we are both afraid of our neighbors, and with good reason; it would be like rolling up on a big grizzly bear and asking it to please stop stealing your picnic basket. Somebody’s never leaving the campsite.
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:D
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Don’t you just love your own reality soapera on your own private life-radio-station? The only disadvantage being you cannot tune away.
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Right? Earplugs can only block out so much.
I do take comfort in your understanding though. :) Have an awesome day, Fran.
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Oh dear…those are some dreadful neighbors. I’m glad I don’t have to put up with them but also that I reap the benefit of being able to laugh about it lol. Hope your situation improves and that you’ll be out of there soon! :)
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Thank you, Stormy! I dig your attitude! And yes, I think we will be out of here shortly.
Have a great day!
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Ha, haaaa…reminds me of the time a neighbor put a sticker on our mailbox that said, “Krach macht Krank. Es gibt nur eins – RUHE!” And we lived in a house with 14 inch thick walls. Apparently, 4 kids fighting over the Nintendo with the windows open during Ruhezeit was something that needed our attention. The sticker was actually put out by the Berliner Gesundheitsamt. Try gluing their door shut with a few. I hope you find a new home soon. :)
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Holy monkey! Really? The amt put a sticker on your door?
Man, I gotta find me some of those…
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Out of curiosity, how do you know these people’s names? Shouldn’t it be Frau und Herr von Crazy-as-Batshit? No, wait, you are not making their names up, are you?
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Of course not, Sandra. We’re just surrounded by jerks with cartoon names. :)
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Omg. I am laughing so hard. This was my absolute fav line…”Timur is Turkish, and he has that adorably pathetic look of a little boy who has just zipped his pecker up in his fly for the first time.” You crack me up, thanks for making my day!
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That’s awesome, Krystle! Thank you for taking the time to read and comment on that post! If we’re making people laugh, we’re happy. That’s really the best compliment.
Have a wonderful day!
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Yo Bro,
Opposite us is a free apartment 3rooms, bathroom, kitchen, balcony (a nice big one, where you can actually sit around a table with 4 people and still have room to swing your neighbour’s cat! sorry – neighbor’s cat).It’s in the List part of town, in a nice quiet cul-de-sac (literally “kill the bag”), just off the Lister Kirchweg. Only 6 apartments in the house, so nice and quiet. The apartment above the empty one is occupied by a Mr F. Kruger, and the one below by Messrs Jekyll-Hyde, so no problems there!
You interested? I guess you can extract my e-mail address by performing some major IT geekery.
Michael
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Haw haw haw! Thank you for the offer, Michael. I loved it.
I think we’ve found a good future home for ourselves, but I will certainly keep you in mind if it falls through.
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♬ The folks above us have a dog,
The ones below, a baby.
The folks who live across the hall
Have fights, I don’t mean maybe.
We like our new apartment house,
It’s cozy and it’s smart enough.
The only trouble is, we find,
Apartments
Aren’t
Apart enough. ♬
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AWESOME. I had no idea you were a poet.
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I can only dream of being so clever. This is part of a set of songs I learned with my chorus in high school – they were called “supermarket madrigals.” It’s the only one I remember, sadly.
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Ha! Look what I just found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pza12zdAOHA
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Haw! Nice. :)
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Okay… this was just downright HILARIOUS. the way you write it, it makes it sound like really funny… but I know very well how disturbing neighbors can be.
I love some of your expressions in particular… like the mice in the microwave. LOL
Thanks for making me laugh!!
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Oh dear. So sorry. What a nightmare. We once had a wierdo woman who rang our bell at 2.am. whilst we were sleeping. There was a man who was seriously ill living nearby so we thought he had made a turn for the worse, but oh no, it was because she heard someone speaking English!!!!
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It kind of reminds me of our upstairs neighbors back in the Netherlands. XD They were screaming at night would try to poison our dogs who were barking a little.
Anyway, I’m so glad I found your blog, it looks awesome and it’s a great motivation to work on my German a little. I’ll be keeping an eye on this. :)
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My German great-uncle and his wife apparently got on so badly that he built a wall slap bang right down the middle of their house so they could each live in one half. True story.
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