unanticipated

Yesterday, I had to do some things that I was not excited about. I had to pay bills. I had been told by D - the woman I replaced here - that paying bills is a headache. The line at the post office - people pay bills at the post office - is long. The clerks yell at you if you don't fill out the payment slip correctly. After initial difficulty locating the post office, It was painless. I stood in the longest line for about 5 minutes, chatting with F. I stepped to a window, handed the clerk my payment slips & cash & there was no yelling.

F & I went to the train station to figure out how to get to Bucharest. I frustrate easily when I can't make myself understood, so I wasn't looking forward to buying tickets. After being redirected into the correct line, it was painless. Between my bad Serbian and the clerks decent English, we bought tickets on the Friday train to Bucharest. I also discovered that there are 2 trains daily to Solun/Thessaloniki.

But, as is often the case, the craziness came from an unanticipated source: my washing machine. It turns out that the water that it spills all over the floor is not just bothersome to me. It drips from the bathroom ceiling of my downstairs neighbor. I recieved an angry call in which the words 'bathroom' and 'water' figured largely. I told the caller that I didn't understand. A few minutes later, there was a knock on my door. It was a woman I had never seen before, dressed in an orange bathrobe. I followed her downstairs & saw the dripping water. I spoke with her & another neighbor for about 15 minutes. I tried to explain that I know where the water is coming from, that there was a giant puddle on my bathroom floor at that moment, but it wasn't working. I listened to them complain about my landlord & chatted with them about how I was studying Serbian. I left her flat with instructions to run my show & then run my washing machine. I recieved another call, thus confirming that it was the washing machine that was leaking.

So it looks like I will be handwashing for a while - at least until I can network my way to a decent plumber.