Noisy Neighbors

"God, you are such an idiot Tom!"

"Shut up, Sue!"

I could hear their exchange from the other side of the wall and the laughter following it.

Noisy neighbors, we all know them and I am sure many of you have their own first-hand experiences.

They come in all types and ages: Students partying in the middle of the week like Tom, Sue and their friends. But there was also old people watching TV at max volume, couples fighting and screaming at each other or kids who are a little too loud when playing.

Some years ago I used to live in the low-income area of my city. Some of you might have one word on their mind right away: ghetto. It wasn't like that. The area itself wasn't that bad. What was bad, were the buildings. Look up 'Soviet Living Complexes Germany' and you know what I am talking about. Even the better ones are cheaply made, old-fashioned and barely adequate for our times.

Back in the day, when these complexes were new, everyone wanted to live there. After the Germany reunion though, their reputation fell. As newer and better buildings became the norm. In the decade following the reunion everyone who could afford it moved to the more attractive parts of the city.

Only the poor and those living on welfare or other benefits stayed.

Nowadays the whole area is a sort of welfare town. It was a melting pot of alcoholics, the long-term-unemployed and various other, similar people.

How did I end up there? Well to make a long story short: I had to move, could only get a shitty job and couldn't afford to get a better place.

As I said, things weren't all bad. The worst you'd run into was some drunk idiots and those are easy to avoid.

Of course, there were people screaming at each other, but most of it was harmless. Actual violence was scarce. The worst that happened was that you woke up in the middle of the night because of some drunk idiot. In time, you got used to it.

That's why I ignored the noisy neighbors upstairs as well. I had gotten used to hearing the occasional argument or things breaking apart.

I also didn't like calling the police. The few times I actually did, they told people to knock it off. The noise had started again after half an hour or so but with double the intensity. From then on, I decided to lay low.

When the noises upstairs got too loud, I'd often turn the volume up or use my headphones to not be disturbed.

One day the doorbell rang and I saw a lady I assumed was in her late thirties. I had no idea who she was, but that didn't mean much. I barely knew anyone in the building and I didn't want to associate with the other tenants. The lady asked in an embarrassed way if it had been my girlfriend who'd been yelling last night.

Now at the time, I'd been dating a girl for some time who used to stay over at my place a lot. I guess she assumed that we were living together.

In a few sentences, I informed her that this wasn't the case. I was living alone and my girlfriend hadn't stayed over last night.

At that, the lady seemed a bit startled but then nodded. Of course, I asked what was going on. She told me she was living on one of the upper floors and she wasn't feeling safe anymore.

She said she'd hoped that it wasn't the alcoholic couple living above me who'd been at it again. It seemed that by now they were fighting almost every day. She was worried that they'd cause a ruckus in the hallways again like a couple weeks ago.
After that, she went on to tell me those weren't the only things that worried her. There were the drug addicts on floor number five and there were all those shady people who visited the apartment next to hers.
No, she said shaking her head, things had gone downhill before she excused herself and left.