As detailed in this category, the building next door has been under renovation for about seven years which has meant an inferno of noise, and for example, I have not been able to use my balcony for as many summers, for one reason or the other, including this summer, which has perhaps so far been the noisiest of all because they are pretending to be doing some landscape gardening downstairs.

During all this time, our Hausverwaltung has been mostly silent and seemingly more on the side of the investors next door than on ours.

Imagine my surprise, then, when this morning I received a letter (yes – as in snailmail – how absurd and laughable is that in itself?) informing me that the fence downstairs between our plot of land and that of the monstrosity next door will be replaced this week. End of.

Now, when I receive an actual letter, as in by Deutsche Post, I assume it is about something important, and which will have consequences for me and/or require some sort of action from my side. So I opened it.

But that is literally all they write. Not a word about why they are telling us this after basically never having warned us about particularly noisy weeks months and years. Not to mention the scaffolding and debris which prevented me from using my balcony for at least two summers, one of which was at the height of the pandemic when it would have been really nice to have the use of that outdoor space. Especially since I was promised at the beginning that my balcony would not be affected. One of, as it has turned out, many lies told to me since I moved to Berlin.

Seriously? Is that all they wanted to tell us – by LETTER, as if we don’t have eyes in our heads and can see what is happening? WHY BOTHER TO SEND A LETTER about something so unimportant, trivial, and non-conseqential after having ignored all the real problems we have been having basically for the last handful of years????? Who cares that an old FENCE is being removed and replaced by a new one?