continued!

Back to the mystery!

Before I moved into our little slice of heaven at the end of November, my flatmates had a birthday party for Ricky.  Attempting to be good neighbors, Anna and Ricky went up to one of our neighbors who live above us to let them know that because of the birthday party, things might get louder than usual.  Our lovely neighbors responded by yelling at them to get out and that if they ever came up to their apartment again they would get punched in the face or something stupid like that.  Then, during the party, the police came and gave the WG an "Anzeige," which is sort of like a police notice that might result in a fine or just being put on some records or something.  They didn't even give us a warning first, which is the usual protocol for loud parties.  

So, we've been having problems with our mail- namely, someone has been stealing it.  Ricky's cell phone bills were stolen, which resulted in late fees he had to pay, some of Lydi's and Anna's mail was missing, and when we were supposed to get our Anzeige so we could speak with the police and hopefully not get fined, the Anzeige suddenly appeared in our mailbox the morning after the deadline for us to call the authorities, and Lydia had to call the police and explain that we got the letter too late and therefore couldn't meet the deadline.

Since all this has been explained to me in German I might not have caught every last detail, but the general suspicion is that our jerky neighbors are doing it.  The motive is that on the other side of us is more of their extended family or something, and they want us to move out so more of their family can move in and essentially commandeer a huge chunk of our building.  These people are pretty foul.  They're essentially the ghetto immigrant stereotype personified:  there's way too many kids, the men are gross and beat up their wives, and they presumably hate Germans even though they could've picked somewhere else to migrate to (Europe doesn't exactly have a shortage of available countries).  So--we suspect--they have been stealing our mail in efforts to make us so exasperated that we move out.

Not happening.  Of course, our hypothesis might be wrong and it could be just some loser who has nothing better to do, but we don't feel like moving out and we would really prefer to receive all of our mail.  So we contacted the management of our apartment complex and they installed a wonderful little device in our mailbox.  When you put your hand in to try to take the mail out without unlocking the box, a very sharp piece of metal cuts up your hand and makes it difficult to remove.

Pretty cool.