The Not-Quite-Biblical Flood

It's been a few days since we posted. Lots of activity intervened. But we're still alive and weren't kidnapped by the Kazakh Mafia or anything.

One of the things that kept us busy was our apartment. In retribution for our posting about the water, our apartment building decided this week to try to fill up our kitchen with another fluid that's not quite as clear as water. Twice.

The first time, after supper, we suddenly heard water gurgling in the kitchen. We went in to check and saw that the sink was slowly filling up from the bottom. We decided to wait to see what would happen. Soon we had to bail out the sink with a bucket and then wipe up a little trickle of water that was coming out of the pipe that attaches the washing machine to the kitchen drain line.

The plumbers came the next day and used a snake to clear out our drain and the drain of the apartment below us. They also banged around with the pipes and took some of them apart and put them back together. They were here for about three or four hours all told.

At supper time, the neighbour from upstairs came down and asked us if the water was all right to use. We said that the water was fine.

Two hours later, we heard a great belching sound from the kitchen. We raced in to find the sink filling up at a high rate with what looked like oil. Then the washing machine drain started spouting the same oil. My first thought was that we were gonna be rich! But then I realized that this stuff didn't smell like oil. And it was hot. Litres and litres of hot sewage pouring into the sink and onto the floor. We got buckets and established a two-person bucket brigade from the kitchen to the bath tub.

While bailing, we immediately called our housekeeper who lives in the same apartment block. She arrived just in time to get shouted at by our downstairs neighbour. He not only had sewage coming out of his sink, but also from the ceiling. She shouted back at him and they got into a fine row. Finally she got him to understand that our apartment was not the source of the deluge, but the apartment above ours. So they both ran up the stairs and shouted at the woman who lives there. She was running her washing machine. So thirty or forty litres of very hot soapy water had been forcibly pumped down a drain that was apparently still partially blocked, thus dislodging old bits of grease and other delectables and shooting the whole works back up the drain pipe as a gooey mess.

The end of the story came the next day, when the plumbers came back, hammered and banged, cleaned the pipes out again, and tested once more. Everything is fine now, we're sure. But we haven't heard anyone use their washing machine since. Nobody wants to be the next guilty party.

Soon we will post details about the food. But we need to let our stomachs settle first.

Take care, everyone!

John