ant invasion - episode 2

Some time ago I was making fun of Oli who was complaining about three ants in his room. Well...now it's me who's freaking out! Yesterday when I got home from work in the afternoon, I found our flat invaded by ants. No, not just a few of them, there were hundreds and hundreds of those little creatures. Their trail ran from Oli's room through our living room (even crawling on top of the couch) along the hallway right into kitchen. First thing I did was to scream out loud, which was kind of pointless since no one was home (I might have scared our neighbor though..). Why couldn't they at least spare the kitchen?? They were crawling up the refrigerator along the kitchen bench, up the toaster, into the coffee machine and down the sink...yeah, you got it: they were EVERYWHERE!! I even found some of them nibbling at my Milka chocolate bunny (I mean how dare they doing a thing like that??). I was only glad that they stayed away from my room...

My flatmates were all gone home over the weekend, so there I was, left alone with all these ants, having no one to support me in this miserable situation. Only solution: call Mum. She usually has an answer for every problem. "Go and buy some insecticide!" was her reply. Right, where would I get insecticide on a Sunday?? I was expecting some kind of 'home remedy' to deal with those ants, but no, the only thing that would help was poison. So I spend the rest of the day killing ants with the vacuum cleaner. It didn't make sense though, since more and more of them appeared every hour (and always finding new ways to enter our flat).

First thing I did this morning: I went to DM and bought not only one but three of those green little thingies that are supposed to kill my little friends and eradicate their nests. Now I might sound like a cold-blooded killer, but trust me, you would act the same way if you were in my shoes. It's not a nice thing to watch TV and have lunch with ants...

I haven't found at lot of dead ants yet, but since they don't visit us at night, I'll have to wait until tomorrow to see whether it's true that "Vandal wirkt phänomenal"...

Ant invasions and other troubles

Oli, my flat mate, just came into my room: "Astrid, Astrid my room's invaded...by ants! How can I possibly get rid of them? They are crawling in from the window and now they are like everywhere!!" So I followed him into his room to check out the situation and help him fight the evil. But you know, as hard as I tried, I just couldn't make out any ants. "Right there at the window, can't you see?" After examining his window closely, I could find indeed a couple of ants, two or three at the most.. "There were loads of them, really!!" Yeah right...but I nodded and tried to take his problem seriously. I told him to get an anti-ants spray or suchlike and with that the problem was solved.

But we've already had to deal with worse problems than ants: A few weeks ago, it was Faschingsdienstag (is there a translation for that??), I was woken early in the morning by loud voices in the hallway . "What the hell's going on", I thought ,"can't they be quiet?!" I was really annoyed since I hadn't had much sleep but I got even more annoyed when someone knocked, no not knocked, hammered against my door. Martin barged in: "Astrid, get up we have a problem!!" Still half asleep I staggered into the hallway to see what kind of problem we had. And damn, we DID have a problem! The bathroom was flooded, the toilet was flooded and Martin and Oli were desperately trying to stopp the water from running into the hall by piling up towles at the doors. Martin explained: "I was having a shower when I suddenly noticed that instead of draining off, water was actually coming out of the sink. And there's also something wrong with the toilet...it's rather disgusting, and it smells... " More and more water kept coming out of the drain and we had no idea how to stop it.

So next thing we did was waking Anna: "Emergency!! Anna get up!" (she wasn't pleased either..) and then we went down to our landlady to ask for help. She told us to call a plumber and gave us a number. "Well, I'm sorry, we don't have enough men at the moment. It's gonna take about two hours till we get there.." was the plumber's response, but no way, I wasn't gonna put up with that!! "Listen, in an hour our entire flat will be flooded and that's gonna cost us a whole lot of money! Our floor, our furniture, everything will be ruined, so we need someone to get here right now!!"...ten minutes later they were here. We told them exactly what had happened and then they started dismounting the toilet and let me tell you something: Being a plumber must be the worst job ever!!!..I do not want to go into detail...

After about an hour everything was fixed. Well...not quite. The mess that was left behind was incredible. The whole bathroom and toilet was covered with a brownish, stinky liquid...DISGUSTING!!!!!! Martin, who actually caused the whole trouble, was off to work- so it was up to us to clean the whole mess... First thing we did was going to DM to buy plastic gloves, all sorts of cleaning products and most importantly: a huge bottle of disinfection spray!! I don't know how long it took us to clean everything up and I dearly hope our drain won't ever be clogged again...Seriousy, I hope none of you will ever experience a thing like that! Believe me, it's not how you want to be spending your Faschingsdienstag...

flat mates - a certain kind...

Having left "Pension-Mama" and moved in with three friends of mine was probably one of the best dicisions I've ever made. Apart from the fact that now I have to do my own washing and cook my own meals (more or less...since very often I can't be bothered spending too much time in the kitchen), I can't come up with any drawbacks living on my own. Well...I'm not particularly living on my own since I have three wonderful people sharing a flat with me. We get along almost perfectly well. Almost ...

But let me introduce you to my flat-mates: There's Anna, an old friend of mine, who I've become very close to since we've been living together. Any interesting news are instantly shared as soon as one of us gets home. If one of us feels like talking it's like: turn off the TV, close your book, stop writing your essay and forget about all the homework! Sometimes that's kind of a problem...especially if I have to get something done. But never mind, friendship should be a priority. Anna and I do a lot of crazy things together and there's not one day we don't make each other laugh about some stupid thing.

Then there's Oli. He studys law, and actually I didn't really know him before we moved in together. At first I actually thought he was kind of weird...it's hard to explain what exactly I mean with 'weird', but now that I know him much better we get along very well. He's the kind of guy who has an answer for every question, and if not..well, "hang on a second, I'm gonna check it out on the internet! Google provides an answer for everything". He always wants to find out about stuff right on the spot. Even if it's the most unimportant thing. Lately, for example, we were somehow talking about Latin (I can't remember in which context) and then he was like "what is actually 'walking' in Latin, I can't remember?". None of us did, even though we had been studying Latin for about four years at school. The days were gone in which we were able to conjugate hundrets of verbs, in all 7 tenses, all 6 cases plus conjunctive one and two. So maybe now you can understand why we were a little frustrated about the fact that we've forgotten almost everything we've learned at school and actually started wondering whether the subjects taught at school were useful or not (but that's another long story). So within seconds he came up with the answer (eo, is, ire, ii, itum) and we kept discussing whatever we were just discussing. Oli is always open to any discussion, but sometimes he gives you a hard time since he only rarely changes his point of view, which to my mind, is not always the right one. If he claims to know something, which I know isn't true, well then I have to somehow prove it or he would never believe me.

Quite often we also argue about how certain things are called. No I'm not kidding. The thing is, Oli and Martin (my other flat mate) come from St. Lorenzen, some tiny village in the Mürztal. So coming from the countryside, they kind of speak a different language. The other day, for example, we were arguing whether the lovely "thing" Oli's Mum had made for us was called 'Nussstrudel' or 'Nusspotize'. Oli claimed that the word 'Potize' didn't even exist as he had never heard it before. Well, I could prove him wrong on this one, since I simply had to call one of my work mates, who as cooks should be familiar with this topic. A 'Nusspotize' is not the same as a 'Nussstrudel' though, so what Oli's Mum had baked was actually called a 'Nussstudel'...

Oli is interested in all sorts of things and he loves to read the newspaper. So at least once a day he comes into my room and goes "Astrid, did you know that....Astrid, guess what...Astrid, listen to this...!" He just always wants to share his newly gained knowledge with us and tell us about all the amusing things that he's just read. I've already mentioned before that he studies law. And for him, believe it or not, it's so damn interesting!! Not for me though...but never mind, I still give him the attention he needs, listen to him and pretend to be just as amused, astonished or interested as he is by whatevr he has to tell me.

Now I've drifted off a little with all my anectodes, so let's get back to introducing my flat mates. The last one ist Martin, as already mentioned. He´s the only one who doesn't always stick to the rules that we've set up and he constantly has to be reminded to do his chores. Not that I don't like him, no, that's certainly not true. He actually used to be one of my best friends, but to be honest, moving together hasn't done our friendship any good. You know...he takes everything real easy, tries not to overdo himself and likes to hang out with his friends all night. The problem is, his room is right next to mine and his friends don't understand the meaning of "would you please be quiet, I'd like to sleep..". So that can be annoying at times. Martin is the kind of guy who's fun to hang out with, but not necessarily to live with...

Ok, so I guess that's enough for today, but there are many more episodes of 'WG'-life to come :)