Silver Linings and Drunken Jerks

So that night I went to pick up my stuff and tell the freak I was moving out of his apartment, and could he please pay my deposit back and only charge me two weeks of rent. I wrote down everything, the days I spent there, the internet bill, I even calculated some of the electricity bill into my final estimate, he could not say the calculations were in my favor. I wrote everything down, with dates, days, references, all I could think of, and presented it to him as a fait accompli. He, surprise surprise, was drunk, at 7 in the evening. He came out of the bathroom, wearing nothing but a towel. I asked him to please put some clothes on because we had to have a serious chat and I didn’t like looking at him while he was practically naked. I was terrified the towel would slip off… accidentally or otherwise, and neither would have surprised me.

So finally he put on some clothes and joined me in the living room cum kitchen area. I told him I was moving out and why and presented him with my bill. He looked at it, and said: “Yes, I weell have to look at thees later.” I told him now would do me fine, it wasn’t really difficult to figure out, so could he please make a bit of an effort and at least try to think? I mean, it’s not my fault he can’t stay sober for two minutes. He told me: “No, I can not do eet now, I have to theenk about it.” “How hard can it be?” I asked. “You just look at the dates, use a calculator and presto, I’m out of here and never have to see you again.” “I understand,” he says, “but do you think eet ees normal to just move out without geeveeng notice?” I said: “Well, do you think it’s normal to start banging on someone’s door in the middle of the night while being dead drunk and asking your even drunker friend to scare a girl half to death?” “Yes, I understand.” he said. “I rather doubt that you do,” I replied, “but that’s not my concern. I just want to get out of here as quickly as possible and could you please just give me my money back so I never have to see your drunk face again.” “I weell have to look at eet.” he said again. I said: “I have time, just do it now.” “I can not do eet right now.” Well, unexpected you could hardly call that. But I just wanted my money back. He said he only had 50€ and I could have that if I wanted. I told him I wanted ten times as much, so could he just get a friend to lend him the money or something and get out of my life please. He replied with the message that he had to step outside for a minute. I told him no, just fix it now, if you want to go to the bank I’ll come with and we can get this nasty business over with.

He just ducked outside, and I followed him. I brought all my stuff outside and waited until he came back from the night shop where he’d apparently bought some cigarettes. There was still half a pack on the kitchen counter, but I think he was too drunk to notice. Yet now I had all my stuff outside, and he went back in, and by the time I’d followed him in the bastard had locked the door from the inside and I couldn’t open it with my key! So, I called the Gardai. I’m not usually a fan of involving the police, but this was a different matter. I told them my landlord had locked me out and that there was still some stuff of mine inside. Ok, all I still had in there was some laundry in the dryer, but I just wanted to scare the guy and make it clear I wasn’t having any of this crap. The Gardai came and listened to my story. They knocked on the door and the freak actually let them in, so they got out my laundry and looked around for any other stuff I might have left in there. I didn’t tell them everything the first time though, I thought I had alluded to the sexual intimidation, but apparently that wasn’t obvious. They advised me to get some free legal advice about my deposit and told me he wasn’t legally allowed to ask for one since he wasn’t the owner of the apartment, though he had told them he was. But when I asked them how I could file a suit for sexual harassment they seemed quite upset. Up they went again, and this time I think they were a lot less friendly to the guy than the first time when they had thought it was just a fight between roommates.

So there I was, without a room, with all my stuff in the trunk of a tiny car and hardly any money. I checked into a Bed and Breakfast in the village I was working at, and after some effort got all my suitcases and assorted bags stuffed into the tiny room I would call home for the next couple of days. I started looking at rooms but was too honest, and all the landlords I talked to were pretty reluctant to let a room for only two months. I started getting more and more desperate, and more and more broke, and to top it all up my best Belgian buddy came to visit me, expecting me to have a place for him to crash. I was glad to see him, I could definitely do with a friendly face by then, but the responsibility of having him over weighed heavily on me, and the future was so unsure I got quite depressed. Still we had a great time, and in the end I just checked into a youth hostel, thinking that at least I could afford that for a while longer than the B&B, whose owners were charging me a lot for the minute room I occupied.

I figured I could stay at the hostel for a month or even two if necessary, it wasn’t the best solution, but it was nice and there was always someone to talk to. Downside was, there was always someone to talk to, for privacy in a ten-bed dormitory is quite hard to come by. The first morning for instance, I had to get up at 5 to catch the bus to work, and I had made the stupid mistake of putting all my possessions in this giant creaking padlocked cage. I had a tiny key for the padlock, and obviously the first thing I did was put the key on a windowsill and knock it off again in the middle of the night. Nine people were pretty pissed off when I started moving several other giant creaking cages at five in the morning to find my key, drag my own creaking cage out from under the bed, open the lid with a sound you would associate with Dracula’s fr(ont door, drop the lid again, and finally extract my shower gel, tooth brush and clothes. I only clicked on the bathroom light because I didn’t want to disturb my roommates, but apparently every single bathroom light in Ireland is connected to a fan that starts whirring away like crazy and that hasn’t seen a mechanic since the day it was installed, and at 5 in the morning that is a pretty loud whirr.

In the end I did get to work without being lynched, for which I’m still grateful, and after that I learned to put my necessary morning materials in a bag next to my bed, so I could just grab that and head for the bathroom, close the door and pretend it was someone else that was the loud one when everyone that did not have to wake up at the ungodly hour of 5 had finally gotten over it and had embraced the day. I stayed at the hostel for about a week, and then found a room on the outskirts of the middle of nowhere.

By then my insane ex-landlord, who had apparently taken a bit of a fright when I’d contacted the Gardai, had contacted me to tell me I could have my money back! I was thrilled because although I could finally rent a room, I still didn’t have any cash to pay for it. He texted me to ask me when I could give him his keys back, and I replied that he would get his keys as soon as he gave me my money back. Apparently he had found some other poor soul to take the room, and as soon as that was all sorted out he would reimburse me. Bad as I felt for the new tenant, I couldn’t give up on the chance of getting my deposit back since I needed it to pay my new landlords. So I told him he could transfer the money into my bank account, and he replied that we could fix it straight away if I wanted. At 11 PM. This guy really does not think anything through! I still have to work you idiot, and yes, getting up at 5 requires a decent night’s sleep, strangely enough. Not everyone can just ignore work and start drinking from morning till night.

In the end he did send me 400€. I had not changed my address yet, since I didn’t have a new one, and I was terrified that he could access my internet banking, so I immediately depleted my account and could finally pay my new landlords. I was only a day late, but I felt bad about it since they’d been really nice to me and didn’t even charge me a deposit for the month I would be staying there. My old landlord told me he’d give me the rest of my money in cash when I handed over the keys. I said I would contact him when I had the money, and I did, but he was out of town. In the end we met up two weeks later and he only overcharged me 50€. Since I’d thought I’d never see any of the money back, it was quite a good deal. I went over there and took my new roommate with me since I was a bit hesitant to go there alone, although I would not know why...

We’d almost arrived in town when he texted me to ask if we could meet up at a bar. A bar? Seriously, can’t the alcoholic sod wait even one hour at home when he knows someone’s coming over? In the end I found the bar, another new one, I think he’s been kicked out of all the others in Dublin. I’d told him I had no intentions of paying his electricity bill of two months, and he showed me these two pages that were supposed to prove that my share of the bill was 50€. I just wanted to get this over and done with, no longer see his ugly face and get my life back on track, so I took what he offered and left. He tried to tell me something as I was walking away, but I just ignored him. Afterwards he texted me to tell me that the keys were just a formality, since I could have copied them as many times as I wanted in the mean time. Yes, because I am the kind of girl who would willingly take advantage of a situation like that. I’m a bit offended by that last statement, but all in all, it’s over, I’m alive, have not been raped or beaten up and got most of my money back even though I wasn’t expecting to ever see it again. Silver linings are fantastic in Ireland.     

The Scandinavian Saga continues...

But I didn’t know a lot of people here, so when the guy invited me to go and have a drink with him and his friends I didn’t feel like saying no and spending another night at home. He took me to the only unfashionable bar in Temple Bar (and unfortunately now I do know the origin of that name. It’s not as cool as it sounds, an entire area devoted to drinks like a temple, it just used to be a couple of houses owned by the Temple family, but you can’t have it all, and the tourists really do treat like a Temple for Booze. I read in my guide book that the tourists seem dead set on renaming it Temple Barf though, and that is not a misnomer…) and when I met one of his friends who said I looked really nice the Scandinavian guy apparently replied with: “Yes, she’s a great ride.” I guess I should have seen it coming.

And then there was the unfortunate incident of losing my wallet. Whether it was lost or stolen still remains a mystery, but I hardly had enough money to eat, let alone pay the rest of the apparently illegal deposit. I explained the situation to my roommate, yet since he was drunk it didn’t really seem to sink in, and I had to repeat myself a number of times, while he was in varying stages of sobriety. Luckily my father, bless him, transferred some money onto my new Irish account and I was able to at least buy some food and enjoy a drink on Friday night. So that weekend we went out again.

After assuring all of his friends and random acquaintances that we were not, as he had told them, a couple, the guy tried yet again to feel me up. When I made it clear again that any hanky-panky between us was out of the question, he started whining again about the rest of my deposit (I had already paid my rent for that month but was still a couple hundred Euros short on the deposit) and told me he needed it to finance his trip to Tenerife (he didn’t use the rather tricky word ‘finance’ though, it being already 11 at night and three pints after the time I arrived at the bar). I reminded him that my deposit was not his to use for fun or drinking (which was serious business, not fun) to which he didn’t reply, he just kept telling me he needed the money to book his flight. I also reminded him that I had lost my wallet and that there was no way I could eat as well as pay the rest of my deposit at that time, and after repeating this quite a few times either he accepted it, lost interest, or got distracted by some other pair of legs, it was sort of difficult to tell.  

After that I wasn’t home often, until the next Tuesday night, when I wasn’t feeling well due to some circumstances that will be explained in a next post, for I feel they deserve their own special little place… Anyway, I had been sleeping all day and had only just woken up when the guy started knocking on my door and asked me if we could talk about the money. It was already 11 PM and I had to get up at 5 Am the next morning, so I was not really pleased about this, and since I could hear the telltale slur of at least two pints in his voice (he couldn’t handle more than two pints, yet never stopped there…) I asked him if we could maybe have a chat about that the next day. He said that was ok, and left. Ten minutes later there was another, much louder knock on my door. Some guy asked me to come out and talk about the money, and I told him the same thing I’d said ten minutes before, and added that I had to get up at 5 the next morning and that I would rather like to get some sleep, though I promised again that we could talk about it the next day. When ten minutes later there was an even louder banging, I replied that I would rather not discuss business with drunk people, since he was likely to forget it all again by next morning. Some other guy started telling me that the Scandinavian had asked him to mediate between us since he feared that his English wasn’t good enough (he’s only been here six years now) to have a decent conversation about this touchy subject. By now I was starting to get quite annoyed, so I yanked open the door and asked the stranger who the hell he thought he was knocking on my door in the middle of the night and sticking his nose into other people’s business like that. Turns out the stranger was a rather handsome, incredibly tall and muscular and exceedingly drunk Irish guy, who told me that I had been trying to rip off the poor Scandinavian guy, who was also standing in the hallway looking like he’d been diagnosed with cancer of the puppy (thank you Buffy). I told the complete stranger that there was quite a bit more to the story than that, and asked him why he felt he could order me around in my own apartment. I tried to explain the lost wallet scenario, but met with little response in the logic department. The two guys started shouting at me, the Scandinavian guy actually told me he was going to call my father at 12 o’clock, and that my father would surely agree with him. I told him he could do whatever he wanted to, I wasn’t going to lose more sleep over it and could he please leave me alone now and let me get some rest since I had to work the next day. I went into my room and locked it, because by now I was pretty freaked out. I called a friend to be on standby, in case they broke down the door or something, and my friend could hear the guys shouting over the phone even through the locked door. He asked me if I wanted him to come over, and advised me to start packing up my stuff. By now it was 12.30 AM, and I hadn’t eaten since lunch. So I packed everything I could find and listened when it would be safe to venture out of my room again. It seemed there was quite a vivid party going on in the living room, the music didn’t stop until three, and in that time the guys came knocking on my door a couple more times, while I was inside trying to ignore them and the pressing urge of my bladder at the same time. Finally I fell asleep despite my empty stomach and full bladder. I was still afraid to leave my room because the hallway lights were still on.

Two hours later I woke up and stole into the bathroom. I took a quick shower, grabbed all my stuff that was in there and put it in my room. I went into the living room cum kitchen, and saw the huge Irish guy sprawled on the couch cushions in the middle of the floor. I had to get past him to get into the kitchen, and was terrified in case he was faking his drunken sleep and would grab my ankle while I stepped over him. I took all my stuff out of the fridge and cupboards and got away safely, with a bulging bag of food that I would just have to take to work with me since it had to be refrigerated. I couldn’t afford to lose any of it, since I was really short on cash.

That day I sent my roommate a text message, telling him what time I’d be home and that we really needed to talk. He sent me a text back, saying: “Sure, what’s on your mind?” What’s on my mind?!? I almost called the Gardai on him, I was scared out of my wits, ready to move out and I had been having nightmares in which these guys actually did break down the door and I had to flee the apartment in my pajamas and couldn’t find a Garda anywhere…

To be continued…

Dublin - first few weeks in a strange city

As most of you probably know by now, I have left the tiny mothercountry of Belgium and have embarked on the next great adventure: Dublin.

Though it’s close to home, and the population of Ireland is not even half of Belgium’s, and it’s almost winter here, it’s still quite warm and I felt really adventurous when I started out. I asked my father along to help me look for a place and he really helped me out in a lot of ways.

But when he had gone back to Belgium things started to get weird…

I found a room in the centre of Dublin. It wasn’t big, or well-looked after, and was rather expensive, but still I liked it a lot, and it was just a stone’s throw away from the Indignados that occupy Dame Street, (or at least a little square of it), Trinity College, Temple Bar, and all the landmarks that let tourists know where they find themselves in a strange city (like the Spike or Spire, a giant – you guessed it – spire that pierces the air above Dublin and that according to local legend is just put there so you can find your way home from the pub. Since the pubs already close at three I doubt this but it’s such a nice explanation I’d rather not know the truth and am content with this little spiky nugget of information). All in all I liked my room, but not my roommate.

He was a Scandinavian guy that seemed to live solely on beer and fried eggs and ham. Every night the entire apartment would stink of yet another batch of fried eggs, and although he went to the gym every other day or so it seemed, you couldn’t help but notice – mostly because he insisted in walking around the apartment in nothing more than some tight boxers or a towel – that it didn’t do him much good.

And since I’m from Belgium, I’m quite used to people having a few drinks. But when someone doesn’t even bother to come home from work and just stops at the nearest pub to down a load of pints that they don’t seem to be able to handle you tend to ask questions. Not directly to the person in question, I soon figured out that was not the way to go. Any query was met with a “Eeuh, I don’t think I understand, could you explain it to me again please?” and although seriously considered, by the time the consideration was finished the query had been forgotten. So that did not get us anywhere.

To be continued.