This apartment has been about the worst thing to happen to me since the Steeler’s won the Superbowl… well, actually, the apartment was happening to me BEFORE the Steeler’s won the Superbowl, but that is beside the point.
When we first moved in, we had to have a cleaning lady come because the apartment was filthy with the grime of renovation and construction. It was uncomfortable because our director said the level of cleanliness was unreasonable, and made us get a cleaning lady instead of doing it ourselves. There was grout stuck to the floor and she had to come a second time because she did not have the materials she needed to clean it effectively. Two weeks ago, and again this Saturday and Sunday, I had to crawl around on my hands and knees with a knife fixing the problem the lady was supposed to come and clean.
Our toilet, sink, and bidet were all leaking. So we told our landlady, and she and her husband came to prove to us that there were no problems. Eventually, we got up the nerve to call again, because there was so much water on the floor that we felt it warranted a plumber. I even took a picture of the leaking sink dripping in case of liability, as they accused us of trying to get them to pay for a plumber they did not need. When the plumber finally came, we also told him about the shower not draining. Turns out there were large chunks of grout stuck in the drain, and so the water was not draining properly. The next time we saw our landlady, she gave us a cover for our shower and sink drains so we would stop clogging them as fixing the shower cost her 40 Euro. Right: it’s my hair clogging the drain, not the giant rocks YOUR CONSTRUCTION WORKERS FORCED under the drain cover.
At the same time that we initially told our land lady about the fixtures in the bathroom leaking, we had puddles forming spontaneously everywhere, and were concerned that perhaps a pipe had broken or something. Because the building is made of stone, and they seal all of the surfaces, after rennovating it is necessary to let the house rest, without occupants, so that it can learn to “breathe” (that is to say, get nice little holes in the seal as the house continues to settle). We were moved in directly following renno, and so all of the steam from the foods we cooked, and all our breathing was creating puddles on the cold tile floors. So, because they neglected to wait that period, in the dead of winter, we have to open our windows while we leave the house (because it is too cold to stay), and leave our belongings unguarded, and freeze our butts off when we get home. But that is our fault too. Oh, and by the way, you remember that this is a record cold winter in Viterbo, and all of Italy.
Did we mention the furniture? No? Well, let’s see, we were given, a table, dressers, a wardrobe, and night stands that are fully functional. Our chairs are ancient and you sit on the frames of them, instead of the supposed upholstery. The bed sags in the middle so that chiropractic assistance, as it is needed now, will be sorely needed by the end of the trip. The china cabinet was originally filled with remnants from the construction that we had to get rid of ourselves, and still has one glass pane missing. The oven has no rack, and though our landlady supposedly has talked to the manufacturer, we still have to bake with another cake pan underneath whatever we’re cooking so that the bottom doesn’t burn. The buzzer system in our building, we were told, did not work. Actually, the system does work: all except our button, which has yet to be replaced, or even touched after 2 and a half months.
Now, this week, our water heater broke. It was an old water heater. We did not have the heat on in the house. The thermostat, for over a month has been turned to off, and on the heater, the setting is to heat only the water. We take very short showers, because we were told gas was expensive, and our water heater only holds so much water. Now, we are being blamed for the water heater. Apperently we keep the heat on too high and take insane showers, and increased the water pressure to a dangerous level so we used too much water. They had to replace it. I am sorry to hear that, especially since the new one is smaller. I am sorry that our land lady and her husband had to stay here all day and watch the plumbers. I am also sorry that the plumbers keep smoking in my home, even though we have asked them not to, and even wrote a note to our landlady asking HER to ask them not to smoke.
To top it all off, when we got home from Siena on Fridday, a note was left in response to our note. It attempted to clearly illustrate our fault in the matter of the water heater, and showed that we owed almost 600 euro in Utilities, when our Utilities were estimated as 25 euro per person per month. Hmm… 3 months times 50 bucks is 150 bucks, not 600. Give me a break. On Saturday, our heater was fixed after 3 cold nights. Our landlady and her husband came in to discuss our bill, because we discovered that her math was wrong. Even after all the math turned out correctly according to the bill she brought in (from October and November, and not the current bill), we are still being asked to pay 443 euros in electricity and gas, for roughly two months. Now, if her water heater went crazy and did pump water constantly, even when we turned the thermostat all the way off, as we were told to, and worked constantly, causing it to break permanently, that is not our fault, and I do not believe that we should have to pay for utilities that her faulty machinery used up. Not to mention, if the heat was higher in the first place, we had to leave our windows open during the day a couple times a week because they had us move in too early. We are also being asked to pay the 1300 euro for the water heater replacement and the work of the plumber.
Let’s talk about the plumber for a second. He has been the one doing all the plumbing for these people. Everything in this house leaks. EVERYTHING. He has been back to our house so many times already. Why do they keep hiring him? We don’t understand. In addition, when we first had a problem with the radiator, we looked at what we thought was the gas pressure dial, which was in reality the water pressure dial. It was at 0 when it is usually around 1.3. We talked to our program director, who told us to turn a little black knob at the bottom of the heater until the dial popped back up to 1.3. We did this. It remained that way, until the plumber came on Thursday night. When they left we went to look at the heater. The dial was up to 3.5, and in the red zone. Still believing this was gas pressure, we called our program director again, and he called the plumber. The plumber, at that time, told Stefano that unlike Teresa told Kevin, the heater was not our fault: that it was old, and had a lot of use. He also said that the pressure was fine, and that it was water pressure, so we would be fine.
This seems like it would be a fine place to end, except for the fact that the plumber has completely changed his story, indicating that the reason the heater had to be replaced is because we had the pressure up to 4 constantly, and so the electricity ran all day, and the gas ran all day. Now… why would we call our director in a panic if we were used to seeing the dial at 4 and it was at 3.5?
So basically, we are being blamed for everything that goes wrong in this house: the shower drain, the sink, the water heater. We think perhaps the plumber is sabotaging things, or at least lying to Teresa about the causes of things to keep her business and make us look bad. He has no loyalty to us, but if he can make more money from her and from her husband, he will be fine. Oh, and he left a couple of big pipes here. Instead of taking them to the trash, we kept them, just in case we get blamed for something else.
The straw that broke this camel’s back was the note left by the sink. We did dishes very late at night, because we wanted to have a clean house for when the landlady came, and we were without hot water, (and thought the problem was easy to fix) so we had waited a day to do dishes. The nice little trap was in the sink. We do our dishes in a bucket because there was no stopper provided for the kitchen sink, and we can’t find one, so we make due. I dumped the dirty water out into the sink, and the little trap she gave us moved. The water was sudsy, it was 12:30am, and I accidentally left some food particles in the sink. We found the nasty note telling us that they were mad about the condition we left the sink in, and that our behavior would cost another trip from the plumber (not word for word, I am reading the subtext).
So all in all, I am ticked off, insulted, and overall, hurt that she would think us such feeble minds as to not know how to “treat the apartment,” as indicated in her note to us left on the table. What the heck?! It is less than a week until our wedding, and we are being slighted and blamed for
A) Things beyond our control
B) Things we did not do
C) Ignorance of how to keep a house.
That is really all I want to say right now. If I keep talking, I will publish nasty things on the internet that would get me in trouble later. Just remember: if you’re renting an apartment at the same time as another group of people, check theirs out first, instead of seeing your own, and RUN like a bat out of hades if yours looks like it’s worse…like if theirs has decorations, and you have pictures leftover from past tenants in broken frames… or you have been given antique furniture that needs restored before you even try to use it… or you have no counter space, no couch, no oven rack, and four awkwardly placed windows, and everyone else has an abundance of windows, and a newly updated kitchen. To give you some perspective: 5 girls in our group live in a renovated 500 year old palace with a courtyard that has a well in the center, and 3 live in a new, clean “loft-like” apartment, with a television and a futon. We live in a hole in the wall, and as the “poor kids” on this trip, we weren’t really complaining… until now.