23:52
I can’t say that the near daily sessions of loud talking – sometimes shouting – and things falling and apparently breaking hasn’t caught my attention. As I wrote in an earlier blog here, the public safety in this part of the neighbourhood is on the decline. The situation is clearly not yet out of control, but there’s certainly a negative trend. I don’t expect this to be the most quiet building ever; that’s simply not a realistic expectation considering the kind of people that live here. But regardless of the noise that I accept, property damage and physical violence is obviously not welcome.A recurring joke between some of my friends is that I live in a ghetto, and that it is a very dangerous neighbourhood. Luckily this is far, far from the truth: most of the neighborhoods on minister Vogelaar’s list of 40 neighborhoods (in Dutch) are at the very least ten times worse. Even so, that doesn’t really say anything about my personal sense of security.
Yesterday one of the (downstairs, as I later found out) neighbors arguments/fights got a little out of hand. At first I thought it was coming from the apartment above me (because I’m sure they make a lot of noise on their own, too), but I later found out it was in the apartment below me. It was so loud and disturbing to hear that I was thinking about calling the police. The noise died down, however, and I decided to let it go. My neighbor wasn’t so forgiving, and he did call the police. He actually went downstairs to check out what was going on, and apparently some people (or maybe even a whole “problem” family, as he put it) got into a big fight. Afterwards someone jumped into a waiting car and they drove off. I don’t know exactly what/how/who, but the police were too late to see or witness anything. This upset my neighbor, since he thought that the twelve minutes it took them to get here was way too long. He told the police what he’d heard and seen and I confirmed it for them. Unfortunately I don’t know if they were able to find out what happened.
Obviously it’s not that extreme, things could probably have been a lot worse. But it doesn’t exactly make you feel at ease, either. I am, however, happy that I’ve got a new neighbor that is alert and will not think twice about calling the police. Standing in our hallway past midnight, we talked about what happened, and we both agreed that it’s a good thing the people living on our floor are quite decent. Hopefuly there won’t be a next time, but I’ll certainly be a bit more observant and thoughtful from now on.
