I have no idea if there is some stray planet rubbing its ass against some odd segment of my astrological chart, but lately I’ve been having the feeling of living in an avant-garde movie.

For one, we’ve been getting a bunch of new neighbors straight of out Alice’s looking glass. There is an elderly man who has probably been parked in one of the apartments by some stressed relatives. He seems to be showing some signs of mental deterioration. He spends his days uttering sentences and bits of songs, always the same (“Wenn die Rosen erblühen in Malaga”)

Another new neighbor seems to be having an orgasm every minute. Either she needs help or she works as cam girl. Yet another neighbor has probably had issues with his vocal cords, because he talks both very loudly and like a boy going through adolescence–you known, when one minute you are Pavarotti and the next you could sing Barbie Girl.

A couple upstairs has a newborn girl who screams like a strangled frog, and to top it all off we also have new American neighbor who clearly was raised in some getto neighborhood where everyone was yelling all the time, because that’s what he does. I’m looking forward to the Autumn, so we can keep the windows shut.

But the oddest thing yet happened a couple of days ago. I knew a parcel from Amazon would arrive in the morning, so when the doorbell woke me up I jumped straight out of bed and bolted down the stairs, still half asleep, yet wondering why it was so dark outside.

It turned out that it was dark because it was 4am. Waiting for me at the door was not the Amazon dude, but a middle-aged Arab guy with wild, unblinking eyes, holding a book in front of me. “Gott und das General” he announced (I know it should be “der General”, but I distinctly remember him saying “das General”) followed by some incoherent ramblings in broken German on the virtues of said book. I googled the book later that day and it seems to be an old novel by an author I’ve never heard of.

On a lighter note, hubby and I are thinking of moving to find a bigger place. And I can’t say I’m not glad.