So to those of you who use my blog to verify that I'm actually alive, I'm sorry if you thought I might have been dead. I've been busy lately, and I'm not gonna lie, I've definitely lost most of the motivation I once had to write in this blog. Not sure what caused that to happen, but I'm gonna try to get motivated again.
Since I promised I would tell this story, I'll finally post this entry that I've been attempting to write for the last like 3 weeks haha. Here begins the story of what happened in our piso over the Christmas holidays. Brace yourself, because it's ridiculous.
Since I promised I would tell this story, I'll finally post this entry that I've been attempting to write for the last like 3 weeks haha. Here begins the story of what happened in our piso over the Christmas holidays. Brace yourself, because it's ridiculous.
Day 1 (Dec 21): Martín has just left this morning and Tomás and Endika had left the day before, i.e. I am alone in the piso. The landlord calls me because the neighbors below us are complaining that there's water leaking from their ceiling. They think our apartment is causing the problem. Landlord comes directly to the apartment to check it out. He and the downstairs neighbor make themselves at home walking all around the piso looking for the problem while I scramble to make the piso look somewhat presentable and to hide our Christmas tree** (see footnote for this hilarious story that I can't believe I've forgotten to post about) that is sitting in a cooking pot, leaned up against one of the walls in the living room. After finding no visible problems, they decide that maybe the piso above us is causing the problem. Since no one seems to be home, they cut off the water in the piso above us as a test.
Days 2 & 3 (Dec 22 & 23): I don't hear anything from the neighbor or the landlord. I assume the problem has been solved.
Day 4 (Dec 24): It's Christmas Eve. I am at home, alone, cooking myself some dinner. As if being home alone on Christmas Eve isn't depressing enough, the downstairs neighbor comes up and decides to rub it in. "Oh, so you're not gonna be going anywhere tonight?," he asks me. "Well would you mind cutting off your water because my ceiling is still leaking and I wanna see if that helps." I politely agree and tell him that I'll turn it off when I'm done cooking.
Day 5 (Dec 25): It's Christmas Day. I'm cooking my enchiladas to take to Kelli and David's so I turn the water back on. It's been turned off for like half a day, so I figure that's enough time for the neighbor to figure out if his test has worked. Also, Tomás comes back today. I explain to him everything that has happened.
Day 6 (Dec 26): No word on the leakage. Once again I assume the problem has been resolved.
Day 7 (Dec 27): The landlord calls again. A plumber (fontanero) and an insurance man (perito--I hear "perrito" and wonder why the plumber is bringing a little dog with him hahaha) are coming by to check out the problem sometime after 5. They show up at about 8:00, go back and forth between our piso and the one below investigating before eventually telling Tomás and I that they need to make a "pequeño agujero" or small hole in the wall in Endika's room. Tomás and I give them the go-ahead and both go back to our rooms. After hearing lots of commotion, I head down the hall to see if I can get a peek at what's going on. At first, much to my surprise this is what I see...
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| ALL of Endika's stuff is shoved into one corner of his room ...even his bed hahah |
However, I see nothing of the hole. When the dudes go downstairs to check something else out, Tomás and I check out the damage...
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| This "small hole" just happens to be about a foot in diameter. Slightly larger than what I'd call small |
So after some more investigating, they tell us the verdict. Apparently all the pipes in the piso are like 25-30 years old and they ALL have to be replaced. The insurance man tells us they they'll be able to give the landlord, Juan, a whopping 300 euros to help with the cost. After they leave, we call the landlord to break the news to him. He tells us that he's going to come the next day with his "plumber friend" and check out the situation.
Day 8 (Dec 28): Juan shows up with his plumber friend this afternoon. Now let's get some things straight about Juan. He's a terrible landlord. He's super money-hungry...always shows up promptly at the beginning of the month to collect rent. He obviously doesn't care about the maintenance of his properties if he's letting things like this happen. And the worst part, he's super cheap! He doesn't want to spend a dime on anything extra so unless it's something essential, we're not going to get it.
All that being said, you can imagine what this situation with Juan and his plumber friend might have turned out like. I had no idea what they were doing as I chose to stay in my room and out of their way. They were here til about 8pm and before they left, Tomás and I decided to have a look at what they had done. We had heard a good bit of hammering and drilling, and Tomás had seen the kitchen in a complete state of disarray, so we firgured it would be pretty bad. However, upon inspection, it was even worse than what either of us expected.
Instead of REPLACING the old pipes as suggested, Juan had chosen the cheaper route (surprise, surprise!). He had simply cut off the water to the old pipes and run it through new ones. That doesn't sound too bad, right? WRONG. It would be great if it were done correctly, but when you factor in Juan's cheapness and laziness, you've gotta figure there's gonna be a catch. And sure enough, there was. Instead of running the tubes through the walls like a normal person, they decided it would be easier to leave the pipes outside of the wall. Since the pipes obviously can't just hang on the walls by themselves, every few feet they're riveted to the wall with these lovely black plastic fasteners. AND instead of real metal or PVC pipes (I don't know what the norm is, but it's certainly not what we have), we've got clear plastic tubes. That's right. CLEAR. PLASTIC. TUBES.
The tubes start here at the water heater...
From there, they go in 2 different directions. One set goes off to the right to the washing machine and bathroom and the other off to the left to the kitchen.
Since all of our pipes are now completely ghetto-rigged, Juan decided he didn't really feel like dealing with the other bathroom. Guess he decided he didn't want to run the tubes all the way from the hot water heater, through Endika's room, my room, and Martín's room to get to the other bathroom, so we now have only 1 functioning bathroom. Before this incident, the shower in our second bathroom already didn't work, so we really only had 1 and a half bathrooms. But now, we're down to 1 as the toilet and sink in bathroom 2 no longer work either. ONE bathroom to be used by FOUR people. Good thing only one of us is a girl or this would be an even bigger problem haha.
Since this incident, several other problems with the piso have surfaced:
Here's a few different opinions on the current state of the piso:
Even though we've all agreed that it's ridiculous that we're living in this crappy of an apartment, none of us really want to pack up all of our stuff and move. Endika and Martín have both tried talking to the landlord about it. He basically told us we've got 2 options: if we don't like the price we're paying, then we can move out OR he can get everything fixed, which would mean at least a month (probably more knowing the way Spaniards work) of workers in the apartment everyday, tearing up walls, floors, tubes, etc. Since we're only gonna be here til June, that doesn't really seem like it's worth it to any of us. So for now, we're just dealing with it. Oh well. What can ya do? Just another typical Spain adventure.
All that being said, you can imagine what this situation with Juan and his plumber friend might have turned out like. I had no idea what they were doing as I chose to stay in my room and out of their way. They were here til about 8pm and before they left, Tomás and I decided to have a look at what they had done. We had heard a good bit of hammering and drilling, and Tomás had seen the kitchen in a complete state of disarray, so we firgured it would be pretty bad. However, upon inspection, it was even worse than what either of us expected.
Instead of REPLACING the old pipes as suggested, Juan had chosen the cheaper route (surprise, surprise!). He had simply cut off the water to the old pipes and run it through new ones. That doesn't sound too bad, right? WRONG. It would be great if it were done correctly, but when you factor in Juan's cheapness and laziness, you've gotta figure there's gonna be a catch. And sure enough, there was. Instead of running the tubes through the walls like a normal person, they decided it would be easier to leave the pipes outside of the wall. Since the pipes obviously can't just hang on the walls by themselves, every few feet they're riveted to the wall with these lovely black plastic fasteners. AND instead of real metal or PVC pipes (I don't know what the norm is, but it's certainly not what we have), we've got clear plastic tubes. That's right. CLEAR. PLASTIC. TUBES.
The tubes start here at the water heater...
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| Now doesn't that look like some quality workmanship? The resale value of this place just keeps going up |
From there, they go in 2 different directions. One set goes off to the right to the washing machine and bathroom and the other off to the left to the kitchen.
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| Hot and cold heading behind the washing machine to the bathroom |
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| Through this lovely hole... |
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| ...andddd into the bathroom |
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| As if the bathroom wasn't ugly enough before... |
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| Then the pipes run along the bathroom wall... |
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| ...to get to the toilet |
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| Tomás is SO ready for his first shower in the newly remodeled bathroom! |
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| Back to the water heater, and now we'll head to the left |
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| Along the wall and behind the stove... |
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| Into the kitchen... |
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| Through Endika's food shelf...poor guy got the worst end of this deal |
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And finally we arrive at the new faucet for the kitchen sink Note that there is no option for hot waterSoooo sanitary! |
Since this incident, several other problems with the piso have surfaced:
- The water heater is currently hanging on the wall by a single screw. The tiles surrounding this one screw have begun falling off the wall and I'm sure the water heater is gonna fall pretty soon here too. We called Juan to let him know and his reassuring words were, "Oh no, don't worry, it's not going to fall." Right, Juan, and I suppose we should wait until it does for you to come fix it?
- The cable box stopped working so we've been out of TV for nearly a month now. However, Juan did have his son bring us a new 24" TV to replace the 10-incher we had before...if only we could use it.
- The electricity is jumpier than ever. It's so bad that you can hardly use 2 things at once. I was trying to dry my hair the other day while I had food in the oven and the electricity was shorting out like every 2 minutes or less. We don't have AC so we've all got little space heaters, and I literally can't even have my computer plugged in and use my space heater at the same time without causing the electricity in the entire apartment to shut off.
Here's a few different opinions on the current state of the piso:
- Martín's favorite phrase to describe it is, "que piso más tercermundista!!" That means that basically, our apartment looks like something straight out of a third world country hahaha. Sadly, it's true.
- My friend Juanmi said it looked like a level of Super Mario Bros with all the plastic tubes on the walls.
- Kelli just saw the apartment for the first time and described it as the epitome of a Spanish apartment...dark, cramped, and hideously decorated, complete with "castle-locks" on the doors hahahah. Needless to say, she appreciated her apartment just a little bit more after seeing mine
Even though we've all agreed that it's ridiculous that we're living in this crappy of an apartment, none of us really want to pack up all of our stuff and move. Endika and Martín have both tried talking to the landlord about it. He basically told us we've got 2 options: if we don't like the price we're paying, then we can move out OR he can get everything fixed, which would mean at least a month (probably more knowing the way Spaniards work) of workers in the apartment everyday, tearing up walls, floors, tubes, etc. Since we're only gonna be here til June, that doesn't really seem like it's worth it to any of us. So for now, we're just dealing with it. Oh well. What can ya do? Just another typical Spain adventure.
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**CHRISTMAS TREE STORY--As you might remember from earlier posts, Tomás likes to steal things. You might also recall the video that I posted of him stealing a tree from the street one night in hopes of using it as a Christmas tree since he had never had one before. Since his birthday was December 15th, I decided that it would be awesome to get him a Christmas tree--but not just any old Christmas tree. I figured, what better than to combine his desire for a tree with his love for stolen things. That's right my friends...a stolen Christmas tree!
So, Endika and I went out on the night of the 14th to "buy some candy" that we were both craving. We drove around the city in Endika's car looking for a tree. When we pulled up outside of the soccer stadium, we found some little mini pine trees. They were perfect! Endika proceeded to chop one down using a meat cleaver and his feet to stomp on the trunk to break it.
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| Like so... |
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| GREAT SUCCESS! Note the meat cleaver in his left hand hah |
We hastily shoved the tree into the car (in hopes that no one that was driving by was a cop), brought it back to the piso, decorated it with a box of decorations I had bought earlier that day, and we brought it inside shortly after midnight on the 15th. When Tomás saw it, his eyes lit up like a little kid!
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| Árbolico de navidad! Calidad exagerao! |
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Sorry if this post is poorly written...I wrote it over a period of at least 3 weeks (like 2 or 3 paragraphs at a time) and I'm too lazy to go back and proofread it right now. You'll have to deal with it. At least I finally posted something after a month of not writing!
I need to fill y'all in on everything that I've been up to lately and share some exciting news, so more updates will be coming soon! For now, I'm off to bed! Goooooooodnight my friends :) Miss y'all!
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