November 13, 2022: Home is Where the... Water Leaks?
Ooof. Buckle up, friends. I promise this will be the last of my melodramatic venting. But boy, do I have a story for you. Well, the continuation of a story. Read on.
First things first: if you ever, for any reason, are considering taking a ferry, I highly recommend ferryconnection.com. I cannot sing their praises loudly enough, you guys. I’m taking a trip to Albania next month, and when I went to book a cabin berth, I ran into a problem. I sent them an email, fully expecting to end up having to figure it out myself and probably take a hit cost-wise. But no.
Instead, I received a personalized, lengthy response in which they reiterated my problem in their own words to show they’d heard me and understood, then addressed each part of my email, including my initial problem and each of the potential solutions I’d brought up. Then, when they didn’t have an immediate solution for me, they told me not to worry, that they would contact the ferry company on my behalf and solve the problem, and I should do nothing more than await their next email.
Two days later, I got another personalized, detailed email from them, offering me options and completely solving my problem for me, with no intervention on my part. All I had to do was tell them which option I wanted and pay for the ticket once they’d arranged it for me.
But that wasn’t the end of it. For my return ticket I was only booking a seat and figured I could do that on my own, rather than bother the super helpful and probably busy customer support people at this company with it. But when I paid, I got an error message. It was late, so I figured I would email them in the morning. I never got the chance. Because they emailed me, saying they saw I’d gotten an error message and would I like them to fix it for me?
Yes, I said, I do. And also, I think this is my new favorite company on the face of the planet.
I’m not going to lie to you guys. The website is a little wonky in places, and their copy could use an update. But I have never been so well treated by a company in my life. This was my first time ever using them, and they made me feel like their most valued customer. So excited for this trip. Even though I know ferryconnection.com isn’t the company running the ferry, their service made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Which is such a huge contrast to the story I’m about to tell. The second half of the AirBnB saga. I promise my next post will actually include something about Otranto (which is stunning and deserves none of the bad vibes associated with this AirBnB).
Ok, update! After getting some sleep, we were both still really uncertain about the housing situation. The place we were at, which was supposedly ready for guests, was so minimal. It definitely wasn’t prepared for long term stays, and it was so cold and drafty that neither of us felt comfortable there. That was besides all the cleaning issues. When I went to take a shower, I found that the plastic accordion-style door was covered in black… I don’t even know. I tried not to look too closely. Could have just been dust built up over way too many months without a proper cleaning, or it could have been mold. The WiFi didn’t work. Things just kept building up.
We felt that she—Frederica or Marcella—deserved the chance to fix it. After all, things happen. If she could clean up the place, great. But we wanted to be prepared, so I found another apartment on AirBnB and asked the host if we could go look at it, so we would know if we had a backup option.
Honestly, that apartment was so much better. It was clean, and homely, and well equipped, and the host responded instantly and was super helpful. His whole family was friendly. The one problem was we didn’t know if we could get a refund on the place we already had booked. And, as I send, things happen. It didn’t seem right to bail before Frederica even had the chance to fix the problem. She told us it would be clean and ready for arrival by noon on Monday.
We decided to stop by again on Sunday evening, so we could get a better look at it when we weren’t exhausted and hauling our entire lives around with us. The place was still a mess, and the cleaning crew clearly weren’t coming that day, so we were doubtful how clean it would be when we arrived the next morning. The architecture was so unique, though. The views so stunning. In theory, this apartment looked like a dream.
We started moving things around. Nicole found some shelves in the creepy laundry room, and by putting them across the dishwasher and pulling forward a mini fridge that had been wedged into the corner, made a counter space in the back of the kitchen that looked relatively normal once we’d thrown a tablecloth over it. Then we shifted the stove to hide the gas tank and the worst of the stains on the floor and pushed two tables together to make more counter space between the oven and the fridge. We started thinking about more things we could do to make the place more homey—pull this table more into the middle of the room so you can actually see the view from it, move the couch back to where it was in the photos, maybe we could buy some cheap throw pillows or a couple small rugs from a Walmart-equivalent. By the time we left, we were both feeling like if we had to stay there, we could make it work.
We verified with Frederica that we should meet her at the apartment at noon, and that we could leave our luggage at the place we’d spent the last two nights in, because we didn’t want to cart them halfway across town until we were sure it was for the last time. Plus, we figured we could then take our time, make a couple trips, stop for coffee and gelato as we moved everything. Make a day of it. She also told us she had a “gift” for us, and thanked us for our patience.
That night we got gelato, had drinks at a cute bar in town, enjoyed delicious, authentic pizza. We were relaxed, optimistic, more than eager to forget the whole ordeal and enjoy the view and the location and the cool ceilings. We slept well and slept in, had coffee, were refreshed and bright-eyed.
At 11:50, as we were leaving to meet her, Frederica sent a video of the apartment to show it was clean. The floors were clearly freshly mopped, and the trash had been cleaned off of the tables. We messaged back “Great! We’re on our way!”
When we arrived at noon, she was nowhere to be found. The floors were still drying, but I also quickly spotted dust bunnies sitting front and center on the stairs and a dead beetle in the middle of the floor in the dining room. There also still didn’t seem to be any WiFi, or any instructions on how to sort/put out the trash, and even a welcome message of any kind. We went upstairs, and the beds had been made up and the sheets smelled clean, though they seemed to be on their eighth lives, quite well worn and riddled with pills, and there was only a thin quilt on top of each bed. Whatever “gift” she’d mentioned was nowhere to be found, and when twenty minutes passed and she still hadn’t made an appearance, we texted her again to ask when she would be there, because we had questions.
40 minutes, she promised. We set about resetting the kitchen the way we’d done it the day before, and then turned to the couch. Someone had straightened the sheet covering it, but I noticed some sort of substance on it. It clearly hadn’t been washed. So we took it off and shoved it in the washer, prompting some sort of large, creepy spider to start running around. Out came the vacuum. Once the surface of the cover was devoid of anything spectacularly gruesome, Nicole discovered velcro, and started to peel the thing back. Turns out, the whole cover came off easily, which was handy, since it was disgusting to look at, and when we got a look underneath, it was even worse. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the couch had been picked up from the dump and no one had bothered to clean it. There were dead bugs inside the lining, and more dirt and stains. We vacuumed all of that, too, and set aside the cover for the next load of laundry.
“What time did she say?” I asked, peeking at my watch. It was 1:30. Surely it had been forty minutes since her message.
“She said forty minutes,” Nicole reiterated, “and that was at 12:30.”
We looked at each other, frowning. “Text her again,” I said.
Since the vacuum was out I went to vacuum the dust bunnies off the stairs and the dead bug off the dining room floor. And then I went on to get the dust and cobwebs out from around the furniture in the dining room, and suck the dust out from the cracks around the steps.
“She says she’s sorry, and that she’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
I scoffed. Twenty minutes. Sure. “What I don’t understand is why she wasn’t here to meet us at noon. She was here ten minutes before that, right?”
“Yep,” Nicole agreed, looking at the messages and the video again.
“You definitely told her to meet us here, right?”
She read the messages out to me. It was there, in black and white. Recorded for all of digital posterity.
Nicole got out a sponge to swipe a few stray crumbs off a counter, and then, since she was there, cleaned the litany of scuff marks off the cabinets. I spotted dusty old cobwebs hanging in thick, foot-long strings from the ceiling over the stove. The vacuum got some more use, this time all around the ceilings in the kitchen. I can understand some cobwebs, but maybe not hanging over where I’m going to be preparing food. And these were nasty, too. It was like no one had bothered to clean up there in years. Obviously you’re not going to deep clean after every guest, but once a year or so, you’d think you’d want to make sure the place was, you know, not a health code violation. At least I would, if I were in charge. Unfortunately, I’m not. Or, since I cleaned them up, I suppose technically I am.
“If she’s not here by the twenty minutes, I say we just get on with it, and tell her she can stop by when it’s convenient for us,” I said, all charitable feelings from that morning gone after having waited two hours for this woman, and having spent that time cleaning the place she’d promised us would be clean.
“You know, if this was what we’d walked into when we arrived, I’d be disappointed. But I wouldn’t be ticked,” Nicole pointed out. We agreed, venting to each other over the remainder of the twenty minutes, that if it had been bare-minimum cleaned when we arrived, we wouldn’t really have noticed until morning, and we wouldn’t have noticed it all at once. We would have gone to bed, and been disappointed that it wasn’t as advertised, and probably slowly cleaned things as we noticed them over the course of our stay. It was the series of events that made it so frustrating. The disappointment that it wasn’t as advertised, combined with the frustration of it not being ready for us and the exhaustion of 17 hours of travel, added to the half-mile-plus-stairs additional journey with our heavy suitcases at eleven o’clock at night, her promises that she would fix it, that she would meet us, that she had a gift to apologize for the inconvenience, only to be met with the bare minimum and unfulfilled promises, and then to keep up waiting for two hours, when she’d been there ten minutes before we agreed to meet. We hadn’t had breakfast yet, planning to stop for pastries on the way back for our luggage, and we wanted to unpack, and we wanted to ask her about the non-existent WiFi that was in the listing, the heaters she’d told Nicole would be available but didn’t seem to be there, about how to turn the stair light off because we’d tried everything and it didn’t seem to work, about why there was no hot water in the kitchen.
“What time is it?” I asked, dropping the vacuum cleaner and glaring at the dust that had re-accumulated on the counter due to my attempts on the ceiling.
“2:00.”
Half an hour since her message. I went for my shoes. “Tell her we’re leaving.”
I’d gotten one boot on when Nicole got a message from her, “She says she’s five minutes away. Right around the corner.”
“I don’t care. I’m leaving, I’m getting breakfast, and I’m getting my luggage. We waited for two hours. She can come back later.”
Just then, Nicole’s phone rang. She picked it up and put it on speaker.
“I am here, the key is gone.”
I looked out the glass front doors. No one was hovering outside. I looked at Nicole and shook my head, frowning in confusion.
“Which apartment are you at?” Nicole asked.
“The apartment you stayed in. The key isn’t here.”
“Yeah, I have it,” Nicole said. We were both gaping at each other. What was happening? “I thought you were meeting us at the apartment we booked?”
“No, we need to clean the apartment. The madam is here. Your luggage is still here.”
“Yes, our luggage is still there,” Nicole snapped, “We told you we wanted to meet you at the new apartment before bringing our luggage here.”
“Yes, but the madam needs to clean. You want me to bring it to you?”
“No. We’re on our way there.”
“You want me to pick you up?”
“No. We’re coming. We’ll be there in a minute.” She hung up.
Both of us were shaking, walking fast. There was a lot of stilted, half-finished thoughts. We were both irritated. We could have had our luggage moved by then (at the leisurely, enjoyable pace we’d planned), if she’d met us at noon, as agreed. If she wanted us out of the other place by 2 pm, she could have told us that, instead of stringing us along for two hours.
Then she texted Nicole, “We’re waiting.”
Gosh, you guys, I saw red. “She’s waiting?” I felt utterly hysterical. “We waited for… hang on, why are we going so fast? You know what, I’m not running over there, I’m going to walk. Calmly. And I’m stopping for a damn croissant and a cappuccino. We waited for two hours, she can wait five more minutes.”
So we stopped for a croissant and a cappuccino. We walked. It was probably a good thing, because I, at least, felt less like ripping someone’s head off by the time we got there, though I was still less than pleased and I’m sure it showed.
Frederica is an adorable twenty-something with great fashion sense. I immediately wished I was less ticked off, because I really wanted to like her.
She spotted the coffees immediately. “So sorry. I’m sure you’re hungry,” she said, sympathetically.
She followed us up to the apartment, where our things were kind of everywhere. After I’d cut my hand the first night, I’d gone looking for my bandaids, and I was too tired to remember which suitcase I’d put them in, except that they were at the bottom. I looked calmly at first, but as I looked and looked and couldn’t find them, the frustration and exhaustion built up, and I’d started just pulling everything out, breathing hard because otherwise I felt I might start crying, until Nicole finally convinced me to take one of hers. And after that, we’d kind of spread out. Not a lot, but enough. I don’t think either of us were keen to pack back up so soon after moving, it’s a hassle. We’d planned on making a couple trips, part of why we’d asked to leave out luggage at the old apartment at first.
Frederica was all smiles. I don’t really remember what she said, except that she was trying very hard to win us over and I was trying very hard to smile but it felt a lot like a grimace, and I desperately wanted her to leave us alone. After chatting for a few minutes, she did.
We packed up.
She was fairly insistent on driving us and our luggage back to the other place, and we certainly didn’t want to have to take out luggage back across town if we didn’t have to. She and Emmanuel (I honestly have no idea who he was, I probably should have asked, though I did manage to tell him I was pleased to meet him in Italian, which felt like an accomplishment) loaded it into his car, Nicole and I got to pet the dogs (which were in Marcela’s car, I think? Turns out Marcela is Frederica’s mom, I have no idea what the deal is with the contact information and who is actually managing the AirBnBs, but that’s why we had one on the phone and someone else messaging us the first night).
Puppy therapy is always a good thing, and it did calm us down.
Emmanuel dropped us off where the taxi had the first night, so we went back down the hill with our luggage. Luckily, we’d gotten a better feel for the town since that first night, so we were able to avoid the steps back up to the apartment. We made it with relatively little hassle and started unpacking. Frederica and Marcela showed up, and we got to ask some questions.
“There doesn’t seem to be any WiFi,” Nicole started.
“Ah,” Frederica led us into the weird third bedroom that’s technically in the apartment next door, and we followed, once again very confused. We hadn’t found a router anywhere. She smiled, “it can be difficult, the stone walls, it doesn’t always reach upstairs.”
Hah, I say. It doesn’t reach anywhere but that room. Mostly because we don’t have a router. The apartment next door does. But sure, advertise WiFi in the listing. Technically speaking, there is free WiFi. Though “perfect for remote work” is definitely a stretch.
“I can get you a key for upstairs,” she said. Neither of us had a clue what she meant by “key,” but hoped it meant another router, and said yes, that would be great, thank you.
“We’d like to talk about a partial refund. Just, given… everything,” Nicole brought up, because I’m terrible with confrontation and am a bit of a chicken.
“Oh, yes, of course. I completely understand. We have time to talk about this, yes? You should get settled right now, you’ve had a long journey. We will talk about it, we can definitely accommodate that,” she said, warmly and sympathetically and, now that I’m writing it down, exactly like a snake-oil salesman.
I think we’ve been had.
Anyway, she left, and we went on unpacking. And cleaning. And making discoveries.
The closet door is broken.
There’s a pile of broken lamps in said closet.
The door to the larger, newer, less dingy shower is broken.
Turns out there is hot water in the second bathroom, but someone unplugged the water heater.
One of the chairs is broken, and being held up by a chunk of cardboard in one corner.
The first morning, Nicole found a cockroach. We haven’t seen anymore, thank god (excuse me a moment while I knock on wood…).
There was a pile of dog hair by the dresser. Not even behind or under it. Just… around the corner. In plain sight for anyone who may have been cleaning in here if they’d spared a moment to look.
The light that was flickering ominously was fixable, once Nicole climbed up on a pile of cushions on top of a chair and twisted it, discovering that the lightbulbs are just hanging on a clump of wires inside the sconces, half of which are broken and either taped or glued back together.
We’ve been here a few days, now, and although it’s growing on me, I will certainly be listing warnings in my review. It’s freezing, for one, though we finally got slippers so that’s a huge improvement. The WiFi key she brought us? A SIM card. Not sure how much data she put on it, but it’s already run out.
And here’s a charming new discovery: it’s storming outside, and with each wave of rain striking my window, water leaks inside. I have quite the puddle gradually spreading towards my bed. No wonder it gets so cold in here. It isn’t merely the stone to blame, there are significant holes in the walls, letting plenty of air in from outside. Given the amount of water trickling in and the way the bottom of the baseboard beside the window has eroded, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that there’s significant water damage to this section of the property. Rot, perhaps. Mold. Who knows, really. Still, it doesn’t seem about to collapse underneath my feet, and at this point I can’t even summon any emotion. Shock? No, this is merely par for the course. Fury? Again, we’ve long since learned that the place isn’t quite as advertised. Dismay? There isn’t anything I can do about it. Being dismayed certainly won’t rid me of the puddle, or make it warmer in here.
No, I think I’ll just make some tea and do some writing. This seems like the sort of problem best ignored.
At least until morning, when I certainly intend to tell Frederica that she might want to fix the window before she winds up in need of a more costly repair.