Diddly-Ho, Neighbor-ino
I’m lying on my bed. I just shut off the air-conditioning. Sound of silence. Ready to sleep.
Wait a sec… something is wrong in this picture. Cool temperature ? No noise ? Oh yeah… I’m in Canada !
See, I grew up in France in what North Americans call an heritage building. I mean, you would probably take a picture of it. Six storey, white façade, balconies, big wooden door leading to an inside courtyard, wooden stairs.
To French, it’s just a fairly non-attractive building : white façade equals frequent renovating when you breath dust and can’t open windows for months, big wooden doors equals all dogs will pee on it, balconies scream “I grow my own weed!”.
Forget about air-conditioning : the pipes are so old you can’t do much with them. As for central heating… we had a portable heater. By portable, I mean we had to carry the 200 pounds metal radiator from room to room. Stop laughing – we had running water, it wasn’t that bad. Although hot water was limited – the water balloon wasn’t big and well, I liked long bath.
And of course, we had neighbors. My parents lived on the second floor. Below was a night club. Bad idea – I know. But we were here before the damned disco !
The music itself wasn’t a problem. One good thing about 300 years old buildings is they are pretty soundproof. However, when the disco closed its doors at 4 am, people would gather on the streets, their faces red from the heat and the alcohol, and all heat up. They then indulged themselves in common night activities such as : puking in the street, yelling out to their friends, arguing about where to go next and throwing glass bottles at each other. They would fight and occasionally stab each other. Then the police would come and arrest the wrong people. Which would lead to more fights. And less sleep for us.
In summer, my whole family stood on the balcony and commented the scene. May as well enjoy the free play, right ? You guys watch it on Jerry Springer, we like live action best.
Most people in the building didn’t mind the disco. In fact, we were the only family here. Recently renovated apartment were popular with rich kids who liked the downtown location and the convenience of just having to climb the stairs to nurse their hangover.
So they would start the party in their own apartment before going to the disco downstairs. Ten o’clock, the whole posse climbs the stairs. The wooden stairs. Herd of elephants. Eleven o’clock : why not put a bit of music ? Better : let’s put the stereo on the balcony ! Midnight : why not throw wine bottle out of the window ? Etc.
My favourite neighbor was the medicine student who lived on the 4th floor. He was so concerned with the environment ! Oh yes he was… Every night, when he was drunk enough, an inspired though would come to his head : “what if I took down all the wine bottle I drunk tonight ?”. So he would open the door. Put the bottles in a plastic bag. Swear because the bottle didn’t fit in the plastic bag. Go with it anyway. Trip down the stairs. Swear more. Bottle are rolling down the stairs. Bottle picked up. Tripped down the stairs again.
The longest four floors ever.
I’m now living in a house, in front of an experimental farm. I can’t even hear the corn. The sixteen years old kid next door does listen to loud music… about twenty minutes a day. I can hear cars outside if I really pay attention.
Canada is the country of peaceful sleep. Trust me.
Yeah it kinda of sucks living above a nightclub but all credit to you, you rolled with it and you got an intriguing story out of it:)
I guess there is beauty, even in the things that appear at first glance to be simply annoying (take my blog entries for example ha,ha,ha).
So basically, living so close to a nightclub must have had some effect on you:
My guess is you are either some alcohol-thirsty party animal that keeps dancing even after the DJ has become parallel to the floor OR a serial party destroyer that goes around other people’s parties and pulls out plugs of hi-fi audio, removes plugs from central electricity panels or puts cathartic into people’s drinks and watches them run to the toilet…(they do it all the time in nightclubs what’s wrong with giving them a little extra motivation , lol)
Beautiful post as always, talk to ya later!
What a great post Zhu!
Your family were BRAVE I could never ever survive living above a nightclub!
The difference is weird though isn’t it? When I live in Edinburgh it’s noisy, car horns beeping, drunken youths laughing, loud music pumping…but when I stay with my parents in the countryside it’s dead silent in the night and I am woken up at 4am by the birds tweeting. It makes a nice change.
In the apartment in Paris it’s not too loud outside - the noise comes from upstairs when our neighbour goes to the bathroom which is above our bedroom and pees loudly. Beurk!
Dear Zhu,
Thanks for visiting my blog and commenting. I think we’ve got a great love of culture in common!
I enjoy your blog, too so I have also added your link in the Curious Villager sidebar.
By the way, would love if you wanted to contribute by submitting an article on whatever you like - for example, your favorite things about French culture or the things you found strange or different in Canada. When you submit an article it is posted with your name and link to your blog. You retain full credit and rights.
Ciao!
LMao… Very interesting… You make things sounds so frivolous… “And occasionally stab each other” hahaha
But it’s funny isn’t it… Everything changes, some for the better and some for the worse…
Brought back memories for me when I was in China… Maybe I’ll describe them one day haha
It is amazing what different cultures think of different things, i.e. the building. See, to me it sounds like a really interesting building, something that I would enjoy looking at, however, to you it just comes across as a plain old building, nothing special.
I couldn’t stand living above a night club, it must have been hell at some points, although I would imagine that you would get used to it after a while. However it seems as though where you’re living now is my kind of place, a nice peaceful place without the annoyance of noise.
I actually used to live on a main road, we only moved about 5 years ago now, but you could feel the house shake when a lorry went past, not that the house wasn’t sturdy or strong enough. The houses were actually built post World War II I think, very well built may I add. The place that I am in now is on a very nice estate, and in contrast to my last place, it is very peaceful, which is nice
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Just out of interest, Zhu, do you have an RSS Feed for your blog? I seem unable to find one.