Those of you who have been following me for a while (and by that I mean all three of you), will know that I have a tumultuous history with my neighbors. Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself, but since my idea of loving myself does not exclude wary observation of my own behavior, I figure wary observation of my neighbors’ behavior is totally legit. And trust me, their behavior warrants all manner of wariness.
In years past, I have written here and here about the hijinks of the co-inhabitants of our apartment building in Paris’s 15th arrondissement, and here about the hijinks of the co-inhabitants of our first apartment complex in the leafy western suburb of Maisons-Laffitte. But despite the very high bar of outlandishness set by these previous co-inhabitants, the co-inhabitants of our current residence have managed to outperform them all. How? I’m glad you asked.
Our condo is calm, quiet (except for us), and even leafier than the last place. When we first moved in, we were by far the youngest people there, as well as the only family. Over my many years of life in France, I have made multiple moves from apartment to apartment, and with each move I have gotten closer and closer to the ground floor. Thus, my original 86-step walk-up is now a 0-step garden-level, wheelchair-accessible walk in the park. Literally.
By the time we moved in, our new neighbors already had a vendetta against us owing to the four months of renovations we had to have done prior to our arrival. I say “had to,” because the former occupants, while charming, had decorative tastes strongly evocative of World Market, and by that I mean the entire store: we’re talking ornately carved Aztec-style framed mirrors and multi-colored Moroccan wall hangings, disco ball facets covering vast swaths of bathroom wall space and a giant golden Buddha head reigning over the living room. The whole kitchen was painted silver, which made for quite a contrast with the coral lacquer of the cabinetry. Then there was the garden: a soggy jungle of disintegrating wooden boards, fake plants (your guess is as good as mine), former Christmas trees well on their way to becoming a forest, and a yucca so large and so spiky that its purpose was surely more defensive than it was decorative. Anyway, the place needed work.
By the time we moved in, our new neighbors already had a vendetta against us owing to the four months of renovations we had to have done prior to our arrival. I say “had to,” because the former occupants, while charming, had decorative tastes strongly evocative of World Market, and by that I mean the entire store: we’re talking ornately carved Aztec-style framed mirrors and multi-colored Moroccan wall hangings, disco ball facets covering vast swaths of bathroom wall space and a giant golden Buddha head reigning over the living room. The whole kitchen was painted silver, which made for quite a contrast with the coral lacquer of the cabinetry. Then there was the garden: a soggy jungle of disintegrating wooden boards, fake plants (your guess is as good as mine), former Christmas trees well on their way to becoming a forest, and a yucca so large and so spiky that its purpose was surely more defensive than it was decorative. Anyway, the place needed work.
So after many months of dust and demolition, we moved in. No one knocked on our door with a plate of cookies (not that anyone does that anymore, even if they SHOULD), but at least no one yelled at us about our improperly-folded cardboard boxes or our inordinately loud soup machine, which was something of a victory compared to the dubious welcome we received at our last place. The first few months went by, and I gradually came to “know” the people sharing our condo. Allow me to introduce them:
The lady who’s in charge of everything: I don’t know who went and put the lady who’s in charge of everything in charge of everything, but it must have been someone for whom money was no object because her passion seems to be making unilateral decisions on behalf of the entire residence with various third-party service providers (gardeners, plumbers, renovators, public lighting specialists), which all of us other residents then get to pay for. My husband became so fed up with the whole “outrageous expense” thing that he went and got himself elected president of the co-owners’ association so now technically he’s in charge of everything, which means my title is now technically “the lady married to the guy who’s in charge of everything,” which is pretty decent as far as titles go. I mean I’d rather be “Madame la Duchesse” but this will have to do for now.
The lady who’s friends with the mayor: do you have neighbors you try to avoid because you know that if they catch you they’ll talk and talk and talk and talk and you’ll be late to whatever you were intending to go do, even if it was just meander around the park? The lady who’s friends with the mayor is super nice, so this is not a criticism per se. Plus she’s supposedly friends with the mayor. But man does she talk. In France (and probably everywhere else), if you hear someone in the hallway whom you’d just as soon not run into, you wait behind your door until you hear them go away, and only THEN do you venture out (quickly). I do this with the lady who’s friends with the mayor. I mean unless I have unlimited time on my hands, which is rare because meandering around parks is more time-consuming than you might imagine.
The paranoid guy: this dude is super scared that our residence is going to be attacked by Saracen pirates or marauding bands of brigands from the less desirable parts of the Paris region like Saint Denis or that sketchy town on the other side of the bridge. He went and had a surveillance system installed at every access point of the property, including a metal perimeter gate that can only be opened with a swipe card. However, no sooner had the system been installed than some ne’er-do-well actually succeeded in breaching it, only to be deterred by the double doors of either building. In response, the paranoid guy decided that we need more cameras, and maybe a few drones (preferably the flame-throwing kind). Surely that will do the trick. I’d like to suggest we dig an alligator moat and install a portcullis, but so far only my kids are on board.
The friendly entrepreneur: we should have known something was up when he began talking to us like we were actually people worth befriending or some similarly absurd notion. One amiable chit-chat led to another, and soon he was pausing to say hi over the fence on his way past, or coming over for drinks with his girlfriend. He even invited us to pay him a visit some time at his vacation home in Avignon. His job seemed a bit out of the ordinary; he ran a medical magazine from his studio apartment, but as a fellow freelancer who am I to judge? Then one day we came home at midnight after a long road trip and found a moving van parked across from his garden. We later learned that he had not so much moved precipitously in the middle of the night as he had been evicted for being an occupant sans titre, in other words a squatter. Something tells me he doesn’t have a vacation home in Avignon. Or maybe he does, only it technically isn’t his.
The “sack guy”: I like to shop—or used to before I had kids—but the sack guy doesn’t just like shopping; he has made it his raison d’être. Every day, and I mean every day, I see him leave the property armed with sacks of various sizes, and every day I see him return laden with merchandise of various kinds. Food, six-packs of bottled water, electronics, shoes, you name it. Sometimes he turns around and heads out again the same day. At worst, he waits for the next day. We haven’t exchanged many words, but the few we have exchanged have been pleasant. However, we haven’t quite reached the point in our relationship where I can nonchalantly say, “So, what’s with the sacks? Are you a hoarder? Are you housing illegal immigrants in your basement? Where’s your wife whom no one has seen in over a year? Why don’t you ever open your shutters?” It’s all the more bizarre considering his apartment really isn’t that big. Where does he stock all the stuff? Does he eat it? He has been accused quite vocally by our next-door neighbor of making a lot of noise at night. Could he be holding midnight feasts? If the police ever show up, my only question will be what took them so long. Normal people don’t go shopping every day. Not for six-packs of bottled water anyway. Plus it’s Cristaline. I mean come on.
The Mexican expats: these folks are a mystery. I only know one other Mexican in France, and the fact that I’m Californian makes me want to be friends with this family except they seem to be kind of scared of me, possibly because my kids got into a fight with their kids one summer and now when they see each other they stick their tongues out. Thanks, guys. Way to make it easier for mom to drink margaritas with people who actually know how to make them. The fact that they seem to have mistaken their front yard for a playground has made them rather unpopular among the other residents, in particular the angry guy who lives just above them. Their yard measures about 500 square feet but that has not stopped them from constructing a full-scale tower-slide-swing set, nor from importing an adult olive tree in a gargantuan pot, which had to be driven into the residence (a BIG no-no) and unloaded by two men with a hand trolley. I think my favorite moment was when they threw a birthday party and rented a ginormous inflatable bouncy castle with a dragon’s head that reached the first-floor balcony. The angry guy above them was STOKED, believe me.
The angry guy above the Mexican expats: I think the name says it all. Anger issues. Probably related to a lack of bouncy castles in his youth.
The illegal photographer: co-ownership rules clearly forbid the exercise of any professional activity involving receiving the public, but that does not stop our photographer neighbor from operating a photography business dedicated to recently married couples and/or young families practicing a fairly conservative form of Islam. I’m pretty sure she has a corner on the market here, and since she remains perhaps the most discrete of anyone living in the residence (the exact opposite of us), the non-legality of her business doesn’t seem to pose a threat. I mean why would it, compared to the sack guy? That dude is up to something.
The lady who won’t say hello: any well-meaning tourist to France knows that even if you can’t speak the language, you still HAVE to master basic etiquette if you expect any kind of respect whatsoever. This means at least saying “bonjour” and “au revoir” when you enter and exit shops (although it applies to most other forms of human interaction as well). If someone says “bonjour” to you, you say “bonjour” back. That is the bare minimum of all bare minimums. Thus, if you say “bonjour” to someone—for example, your neighbor—and they say NOTHING in return, that’s potentially bad but also potentially explainable especially if said neighbor is elderly. However, if you say “bonjour” to that same someone repeatedly, and they STILL say nothing, that’s not potentially bad but actually bad. It probably means they hate you, which is a bummer.
The guy whowon’t say used to not say hello: while initially wobbly, my relationship with the guy who USED to not say hello (no relation to the lady who still won’t say hello) has evolved to the point where when I run into him in the hallway and say “bonjour,” he actually says “bonjour” back. That’s a solid win in my book. He managed to install his own private sprinkler system in order to water his miniscule front yard, which part of me kind of admires. I mean it’s totally against the rules, but that’s the subversive French mindset for you. “Give me a rule so I can break it!” Ride on, brother. Ride on.
So those are the all-stars of our current neighbors. I’ve left out the dude next door, who is straight-up schizophrenic and tends to ring our doorbell at odd times of the day to see whether my husband can come do some random repair job (my husband is a banker), but he may pop up in a future post. I was telling one of my brothers-in-law about these colorful characters the other day, and when I’d finished, he looked at me and said, “I think your condo might actually be an unregistered asylum.”
He may be on to something.
The angry guy above the Mexican expats: I think the name says it all. Anger issues. Probably related to a lack of bouncy castles in his youth.
The illegal photographer: co-ownership rules clearly forbid the exercise of any professional activity involving receiving the public, but that does not stop our photographer neighbor from operating a photography business dedicated to recently married couples and/or young families practicing a fairly conservative form of Islam. I’m pretty sure she has a corner on the market here, and since she remains perhaps the most discrete of anyone living in the residence (the exact opposite of us), the non-legality of her business doesn’t seem to pose a threat. I mean why would it, compared to the sack guy? That dude is up to something.
The lady who won’t say hello: any well-meaning tourist to France knows that even if you can’t speak the language, you still HAVE to master basic etiquette if you expect any kind of respect whatsoever. This means at least saying “bonjour” and “au revoir” when you enter and exit shops (although it applies to most other forms of human interaction as well). If someone says “bonjour” to you, you say “bonjour” back. That is the bare minimum of all bare minimums. Thus, if you say “bonjour” to someone—for example, your neighbor—and they say NOTHING in return, that’s potentially bad but also potentially explainable especially if said neighbor is elderly. However, if you say “bonjour” to that same someone repeatedly, and they STILL say nothing, that’s not potentially bad but actually bad. It probably means they hate you, which is a bummer.
The guy who
So those are the all-stars of our current neighbors. I’ve left out the dude next door, who is straight-up schizophrenic and tends to ring our doorbell at odd times of the day to see whether my husband can come do some random repair job (my husband is a banker), but he may pop up in a future post. I was telling one of my brothers-in-law about these colorful characters the other day, and when I’d finished, he looked at me and said, “I think your condo might actually be an unregistered asylum.”
He may be on to something.
