An Unexpected Visitor

 I heard splashes of water on my balcony and ran to see that water was dripping down from my upstairs neighbor.  A newly planted sunflower and some other fresh looking plants on a trellis told me they were planting some new things.  Minutes later I hear splat, splat, splat and look out to see dirt all over my balcony.  Pissed off I start yelling "hello, hello" with no answer.  I could hear some sweeping above-were they trying to ignore me?  Then I try a French accent "allo, ahloooo".  Still no answer.  Clearly an accident, I just didn't want it to be a recurring thing.  Later on in the afternoon I heard someone on the upstairs balcony and called "Alllloooooo" again and a nice young man told me the dirt came from the 3rd floor upstairs neighbor as it landed on his balcony too.

Two hours later my bell rings and a lady with a broom appears at my door and apologizes as her young son got in to the dirt and was having fun shoveling it all around.  No need to bring the broom in-come in and sit down and let's meet!  Poor woman named Ines injured her foot which was in a boot.  Youngest son also opened new bottles of soap and sprayed it all over their windows and balconies.  😃😃👪

I can tell we are going to become fast friends.  Doesn't that take a lot of courage and integrity to come and ring a stranger's bell?  She's also in the pharma industry, ex-pat from Lyon France originally from Tunisia.  The exact two places I've been dying to go.

We asked her for all kinds of advice about the building, about driving, about learning French, about Swiss culture. She assured me its ok to do laundry on Sunday even though we'd been warmed its against the law (its fine in modern buildings like ours but perhaps not accepted in rickety old buildings with old-fashioned people).

Started the day grumpy that I'd have to put my laundry out to dry in a different place for fear of dirt being dumped on it and ended the day with a new friend.