29 August 2012

My Psychotic Neighbors, Part III

Since the last time I posted, we've had a few updates on the crazy neighbors front. For starters, Mr. Schmidt apparently saw my camera in the window the morning I caught him messing with my bike--apparently, my potted sunflower didn't hide it nearly as well as I thought.  Needless to say, he was furious, but couldn't do anything to my bike about it.  The morning after I went to the housing people with the photos, Roommate's bike tires very suspiciously went flat.  Let's recap:

1)  Every time the Schmidt's were mad at me, my bike, and only my bike went flat. This immediately makes us think it was not the boys across the street, because of 1) timing, and 2) if you're a teenage boy making yourself look cool in front of your friends, you don't let the air out of only one bike.  Not when there's a second bike sitting two inches away.

2)  I started keeping my bike in the garden with a camera on it.

3)  Mr. Schmidt gets caught on camera messing with my bike.

4)  I go to housing people.

5)  My roommate's bike, which is located in the front of the house where the Schmidt's knew the camera was not, mysteriously goes flat.

So, I was logical.  And by "logical," I mean I cut out a picture of the camera off the box it came in, set it up as a dummy cam in my window facing the garden, and hung the real camera out the window to capture Roommate's bike.  Unfortunately it rained, so I didn't catch anything.

I found out from other neighbors that Mr. Schmidt spent a good part of last week telling them about the police report he filed against me.  If  such a report was filed, it is completely useless, for two reasons.  One, what I did was legal in Germany because the bike was on private property, and the camera was set up on my personal property. Therefore legal.  I know this because we checked out the legality of the situation, with lawyers.  Technically with law students, but they're lawyers waiting to happen, so whatever.  2)  The housing people not only know what I did, they applauded it and told me to keep up the good work.

However, in all likelihood that report never got filed, because if it had, the police would have been in contact with me by now.  In the off-chance it did get filed, it's still not a big deal, because I can go to the police and file a counter-report for racism--which is definitely NOT legal and about about ten times worse, especially because I have witnesses.

Such is my life.

I made the decision not to go to the housing people yesterday and tell them about Roommate's bike--mostly because I have this giant paper taking up all of my attention and I don't have the energy to both write it and fight with the Schmidt's.  In any case, things have settled down--their style is they freak out for two weeks, then are quiet for a month.  But the housing association has already explicitly told me that when Schmidt-Terror-Time rolls around again, the story is over and the Schmidt's will be kicked out.  Al and I have started taking bets on when this will occur--I say by the end of the year, he says before December.

IN HAPPIER NEWS!

This time next week, I will be in IRELAND!  With CLAIRE!  BIKING AND SHIT!  I am so ridiculously excited, and so simultaneously ridiculously terrified because there is so much I have to do between now and then--write paper, turn in insurance forms, get MRI, discuss MRI, job interview, pack, correct and doctoral dissertation, etc etc etc ad infinitum.

On that note, I'm going to go kick this paper's ass some more.  Have my favorite song of the day.  I don't know why I can't get this song out of my head, but I can't.

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