Meet the Downstairs Neighbor

The majority of my day isn’t really worth much comment: I got up only two hours after I had fallen asleep to go and accompany a group of students to Chartres for a day of touring. I got back to Paris, exhausted, cancelled my dinner plans and spent the night at home.

The one significant thing that happened was just as I was heading out of my apartment. As I got to the next floor below mine, a guy jumped out of his apartment, wearing only a pair of jeans. I smiled bemusedly and wished him a good morning, but he stopped me and told me that there was a “big problem.” Apparently, he’s my downstairs neighbor and he claims that it sounds like I’m moving furniture around when I get up in the morning. I told him that I do no such thing and that I actually wear flip-flops around the house to avoid making noise, but he insisted that the noise was unbearable. He admitted that the noise was probably easier for him to hear because he sleeps on a loft bed near the ceiling, which is probably a significant part of the problem. I told him that I would do my best to avoid making noise in the mornings, but that I was already doing every reasonable thing to avoid making noise.

I don’t know if he’s going to keep complaining or what, but I’m a bit worried if he thinks that the sound of my stocking feet in the morning is as loud as “moving furniture.” French property law makes it very difficult for tenants to be evicted for pretty much any reason, so I can probably presume that if he really decides to pursue legal complaints about the noise, I’ll probably have left Paris by then anyway. Nonetheless, that doesn’t bode well for whenever I have friends over. I’m actually sort of surprised that he didn’t throw a hissy fit when I had nearly 20 people in my apartment in October for my Peruvian food party. Huh.