And, as tends to be the case in communities of such size, people tend to know one another and bump into each other on the streets with frequency. Such, unfortunately, happens to be the case with my landlady—the lovely-yet-lunatic, loquacious Victoria—and my roommates.
This would not be a noteworthy situation if the situation were not as follows:
As I mentioned before, the city/college town of Santander is overpopulated by retired and senior citizens. As in, the scent of the salty sea has to seriously struggle to not be masked by the scent of old people cologne.
I have nothing against old people—I love a lot of old people and hope to live to be very old myself. However, retired, old people tend to have lots of spare time, and tend to like to spend a great quantity of this spare time engaging in conversation younger people who don’t have quite as much spare time. Victoria, our landlady, is no exception to this rule. The combination of “likes to talk” and “lives down the street” in a city where “people are bound to bump into each other on the streets” makes for a very fun (read: sarcasm) situation. We are talking 45 minutes of conversation, minimum, with the empty-nester if you ask her where a bus stop is. And that’s upon running into her causally on the street. The longer conversations (last night’s reached 3 hours, 45 minutes) occur when she shows up without warning at our apartment door. And this tends to be when either A) we are sleeping in after a long night out, B) we have not recently deep-cleaned the apartment, or C) a half-naked Italian opens the door.
I must digress to explain about our apartment situation in order for the gravity of “not having deep-cleaned our apartment” to be fully understood. And then the gravity of the “half-naked Italian” will follow as understood as well. It suffices to say that my roommates (Riki, Kim, and Nicole—see below picture) and I were offered an unbeatable deal on our freshly remodeled, crystal chandelier decorated apartment, which we understand to be the rarely leased lovechild of Victoria and her (less chattersome) husband, Luis.
Victoria offered us the apartment largely because we are seemingly charming, responsible girls who would keep the place spick and span. I’m talking, we could not sign the 15-page lease until we were given an extensive tour of the apartment and what precautionary measures to be taken to keep the place looking like new (and by “like new” I really mean, “like old” because the place is muy abuela as far as interior decorating goes). Of course, we signed the lease (and reluctantly handed over 1000 EURO in cash apiece as a security deposit (see below picture), agreeing to everything Victoria said, while really knowing that we would not actually hire the Romanian housekeeper twice a week per her suggestion, and that a process of intense de-abuela-fication would commence immediately upon moving in, wherein we would opt to make our apartment feel more “our age.” (This would involve removing a hideous floral print plastic tablecloth from the dining room table, investing over 30 euros in scented candles, and hiding several handcrafted wall decorations and over-the-top crucifixes in the recesses of a cabinet that we have since dubbed “the abyss.”)
The thing is, we weren’t prepared for Victoria to also adopt us as her surrogate daughters, a status which apparently grants her permission to show up uninvited at our door and overstay her welcome, giving us hours upon hours of Spanish lessons (we must correct our accents so we speak proper Spain-Spanish), in addition to endless commentary on the state of the economy (bad) and the state of our apartment (worse). It is a very confusing relationship for us. You see, Victoria is a very nice lady, and seems to love chatting with us “precious ninas,” but she is the type of refined woman whose mere presence makes you suddenly self-conscious of your hangnails and un-ironed shirt. She is the type of mother whose knowledge you value but whose criticism you fear, which translates into “she is the type of landlady who would very likely not return our 1,000 EUROapiece security deposit if you screwed anything up in your crystal chandelier-adorned apartment.”
We are now charged with the challenge of balancing a 20somethings lifestyle (and salary—see: TeachersCannotAffordHousekeepers.com) with the expectation that Victoria could show up at any given minute and find reason to not return our security deposits. So far, we are failing.
Last week, we hosted two “CouchSurfers” (travelers that you meet online and cook dinner for you in return for a free couch to sleep on—not as unsafe as it sounds). They were awesome—one was a 19-year-old surfer from Germany who has been traveling around Europe on bike for the past six months, and who may or not have royal blood (he uses a pseudo last name on Facebook for privacy); and the other was a guy from Italy who we are pretty sure has ties to the mafia (he carries around wads of 50-euro bills and was shocked to learn we find spending 100 euro on a single shirt a waste of money). Not sure why he can’t afford a hotel. But whatever, they cooked a delicious dinner for us (quite a (hilarious) accomplishment, as they had no common vocabulary) and then we went out on the town. And then they slept on our couches. And then Victoria showed up, four hours later, at 10am. We’re not sure why.
The (at that point, 100Euro-shirt-less) Italian opened the door (we four girls were sound asleep and somehow missed the incessant doorbell ringing), only to be chided by Victoria for having parked his bicycle and worn high heels on our hardwood floors (he was not responsible for either. Nor does he understand Spanish). We girls later got the brunt of that speech again later from Victoria. And after apologizing profusely, and assuring her that the couch surfers were not dangerous men, we now we play the political game—we want our security deposits back.
The political game involves withstanding the 3-hour Spanish lessons (she literally wrote out the entire Spanish alphabet the other day for Nicole and me, and had us pronounce each letter aloud), inviting Victoria and Luis over for dinner, and making it look like we are always in the process of cleaning our apartment.
The other day, Nicole and I were eating a late lunch when we suddenly heard the doorbell ring in such a manner that we knew it could only be Victoria. We panicked—the kitchen had not been mopped in two days! We obviously did not have time to clean, but decided we could at least make it look like that was our intention. So I ran to the patio to grab the mop and bucket, but failed to realize that it would take a good minute to fill the bucket with enough water to make our cleaning attempt look legitimate. The doorbell continued to ring. We had to answer at some point. I slopped some water on the kitchen floor and assumed the mopping position, which thankfully Victoria acknowledged, upon entering our apartment (accompanied by a cloud of the exact perfume we have been trying to rid our apartment of), with a satisfied nod of the head. But as she then sat down at the dining room table, we became suddenly acutely aware of everything else for which she could upbraid us. The un-table-clothed dining room table (which we were in the middle of eating on), the recently broken Persian blinds (that she stood up to lower—but then stopped—when we insisted that the presence of Peeping Tom construction workers right outside our living room window did not, in fact, creep us out), etc. This anxiety lasted for 3 hours. (This was the incident of the “let’s start from zero, with the Spanish alphabet” lesson.)
Luckily, we got off the hook with that visit—a rarity indeed. If happily enduring 3-hour Spanish lessons is the price we have to pay for ensuring the return of our 1,000Euros apiece at the end of the year, I’ll happily (actually) abide. We’ve now come to expect the visits of Victoria at our apartment, and I think we have learned how to manipulate its appearance to our advantage. (Oh Victoria, having the German and Italian here was such an incredible experience of cultural exchange!) I just hope not to run into Victoria in the streets during those hours when public transportation ceases to function—don’t know what kind of motherly chastising I could handle at that point. Luckily, though, I have an acute sense of smell. If my nostrils detect a whiff of a certain old lady perfume, I will hasten (whether in high heels or flats) down the cobblestone road in the opposite direction.
No comments:
Post a Comment