I have the worst luck ever with neighbours and flats.

I have lived in flats in the Ta’Xbiex/Msida/Gżira area for the last 9 years. I have rented 4 different apartments, finally deciding to buy my own place in Gżira. So that is 5 flats in 9 years, which is 9 years of weird flats and dreadful neighbours. Bear with me as I go through the highlights of the past 9 years.

Flat 1

‘Electrifying Moroccan mating rituals’… is what my flat mate and I called it. We used to hear our neighbours having sex, but the weird part about it was the way we could also hear light switches being clicked on and off, as if they were plugging things in and out of the electrical sockets while doing it.

 

 

Another interesting factor about this flat was the toilet: number ones you could flush by pulling the the chain, but number twos had to be flushed with a bucket.

 

 

Flat 2

We had a flat mate who stole stuff, so it was war!

 

But the weirdest thing was that my bedroom opened onto a yard. On the back wall of the yard the owner had painted a cartoon meadow with trees and cows.

 

 

Flat 3

While living at this flat, I was once going to a Yoga class at 730pm and got asked how much for the hour. Lovely area, and this not mentioning the sound of cars coming and going all night from the alley four floors below my bedroom window.

 

Flat 4

One summer night I found that a family was, for all intents and purposes, living on my roof, mattresses, TV and all, and that they had passed electrical cables through the lift shaft.

 

 

Also, this flat had the hot but noisy gay guy next door.

 

Flat 5

Let’s see, where do I start?

 

Whores living opposite my flat, up till all hours of the night, babies left alone crying in the morning. Luckily for them they were not servicing from my block, simply residing there, and making quite a damn ruckus doing so.

 

Crazy guy who burned everything he cooked in the flat below me.

 

 

Another crazy guy who moved in after the ‘burns everything guy’ and who had parties til 430am nearly every weekend and who graffitied the walls before he left.

 

 

The woman in the block behind ours who at precisely 1415 every school day screams and swears at her children.

I wish I knew exactly which flat you lived in so I could scream at you every day. The sound of these children crying day in day out is a bit much to bear.

 

 

The spoilt 18 year old brat who swears at his mother and fights with her at least three times a week telling her to ‘shut up you robin’. I hear him from two floors up.

 

 

Never a dull moment as you can see! So if you are ever bored of life and need some excitement, lack of sleep, frustration and 100 other feelings…… just rent a flat for a couple of years.