1. August 2017
When I go to my garage I pass this door.
Could it be that the people living inside are shy?
Or are they just afraid of a burglary?
The message is in my mind: “Go away” “Don´t touch anything” “If you try we will see when something has been moved”, and then what?
I often wonder about this door. I know a bit about those who live inside because it is in my condominium. This apartment is beneath mine.
Yesterday I was contemplating about how crazy this is.
The police came the other day looking for a person they thought was living in this apartment. No one was at home so I went downstairs to talk to the nice police men. I have no idea why they are looking for the girl. I don´t know her and could not help them at all. This morning I saw the couple, if they are a couple, leave. I know they are in the apartment during the night. One day when they came home, late in the evening, the man backed at my car while trying to put his in a parking spot. My car is damaged. Next time I saw the man I approached him. No, he had not hit my car, he told me.
I can´t do anything about this, because it is his word against mine and I was stupid enough not take a photo.
Putting up a defensive wall like the one in the photo speaks louder than many words.
I have never seen anything like it, but of course I have not seen everything !
I live in a condominium and sometimes it is quite interesting, being the bloody foreigner among the natives. Most of the people in the village are wonderful and really nice to me. Some of my neighbours are also nice and the ones opposite me are wonderful and helped me when I needed it.
Every Tuesday and every Friday this happens:
There is a wash day. On Tuesdays it is ordinary clothes and on Fridays its bedclothes and pyjamas. The sun is shining and the laundry gets out. There is a law in the land. No laundry beneath your balcony!
I have been around Portugal, from north to south, and never seen anything like this except in Penela. How can you be so selfish and rude? Oh, yes, it is the bloody foreigner that wants to have her beautiful view not polluted by laundry. If the laundry was really beautiful and interesting it might be another matter, but this one has not changed for 6 years. For six years, can you imagine?
Now I have this wonderful glass wall around my balcony. The windows need to be cleaned. I wonder, if the neighbours upstairs have any idea that every Friday they wash my upper windows? Their laundry, their bedclothes, take care of that and those windows are even cleaner than the ones I clean.
How nice is that !
Being the foreigner in a condominium can be interesting, but, if you rock the boat, be prepared, there will be opposition and all hell will brake loose.
Hulda Björnsdóttir
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