Kitchen Fiasco

Hello everyone! 

My time in Germany is almost up! Three weeks and one day left until I head home! I don't know whether to laugh or cry...

With only three weeks left, I have decided to cram in a few last minute trips. Venice last weekend, Groningen in the Netherlands next weekend, and Berlin the weekend after that. My poor bank account was weeping softly when I paid for all my tickets.

Before I get to my Venice post, however, I feel obliged to post about something else that happened before I left.

It is truly a story that will horrify and disgust you. You will say to yourself, "How did Emily put up with it?". Well my friends, I just don't know.

So, my roommates are not the most talkative bunch. Every once in a while I'll run into one of them in the kitchen or awkwardly in the bathroom while I'm brushing my teeth, and there will often be a quick exchange of "hallo" or "hi" before we both scamper off to our rooms.

I never really had a problem with my roommates, except that they are pigs. When I first showed up, my kitchen was somewhat clean, but I walked into my bathroom and the sink was all clogged up with vomit. My one roommate, when she was showing me around the first week (this had been like this for a while), said that she would clean that later... LATER?! There's vomit in your sink, and you're just going to leave it. Gross.

Along with my bathroom, my kitchen is always a mess. I've learned to deal with it, and to expect disgusting messes of dinner from a week ago. It's really only the one girl roommate. The guy who lives next to the bathroom is a ghost. I've seen him maybe twice the whole year. I don't really know how he is alive... The other guy only ever cooks frozen pizzas for him and his buddies, so he never really contributes to the mess. So that leaves the girl. The girl talks really fast and I can never understand her, but I can put up with that. But what I can't deal with (and it is the reason I tried to avoid cooking so much) are the pots, plates, spatulas, pans, mugs, bowls, etc that get left on the counter, table, or stove top for well over a week after she cooked a meal. I'm guessing that she drinks tea every day, because there was a collection of about ten to fifteen dirty mugs that had been next to the sink for most of the year. I don't know if she ever planned on washing them...

The reason I tell you all this is because, one day Jake, Helina, Rachel, and Hannah came over to eat. Jake and Helina decided that they were going to make dinner, so Hannah, Rachel, and I just relaxed. It was a long time before they came back to get us to say that dinner was ready, and here is the reason why:

Jake had gotten so fed up of the disgusting state of my kitchen, that he cleaned everything. I think what set him off were the maggots underneath the silverware drying rack thing. Either that or the mold under the bowls that had been placed by my roommates to dry, and had never been put away, so the moisture turned to mold. It was all so disgusting. This is what I've been living with. No joke. I would go into my kitchen on a typical day, and there would be pots filled with just mushy food from the day before (or a week before...I had no idea). This is what I had come to expect from my kitchen. A few times at the beginning of the year, I had tried to clean up a little, hoping my roommates would get the hint and clean their crap up... but nope. 

Also, you can't open up our fridge without plugging your nose. Jake said he found milk from like last year in there or something ridiculous. There's always food that is expired that nobody gets rid of. Not my food. I only have one little drawer, and everyone else has a shelf filled with old food. It's gross.

So after cleaning my entire kitchen, Jake wrote a note to my disgusting roommates and taped it on the kitchen door. Here's what the kitchen looked like after the cleaning. 

Now use your imagination and picture filth covering the counters, pots filled with week old food stacked up on the stove and next to the sink, and about twenty dirty mugs sitting next to the water heater. Not to mention the little silverware cup for drying... picture maggots underneath all of your kitchen utensils... lovely, right?...

Oh, and I forgot to add that my roommates often bought food and would just leave it out on the table to rot. We have found a cut down head of cabbage, which was left for the fruit flies, so we stuck it out on the balcony hoping that they would get the hint... which of course they didn't. Someone also bought a pineapple when I was away on some trip, and it was left there for god knows how long. It was long enough for it to attract tons of fruit flies, which kind of ruins the whole eating in your kitchen thing, so we bagged up the pineapple and stuck it out on the balcony flower pot, again hoping that my roommates might get the hint.. it won't surprise you to know that it is still there.

So we have different ways of sorting out the garbage here. You have on your right: paper and boxes. On your left: bottles. Usually, it's overflowing.

This is the Gelber-Sack, in which goes all of your plastics and packaging. There was a time period of about a month or so where the door to the trash would not close all the way, because there was so much crap behind it. It didn't seem to bother everyone else, so I had to get back there and dig out all of the packaging and crap that fell behind there. Now it closes, but I'm pretty sure there is some rotting food back there.

He signed and dated it. His handwriting is very nice, so all my roommates would have thought it was mine.

In case you can't read it:

Liebe Mitbewohner,
irgendwann kann man solchen Mist nicht mehr ertragen. Heute Nachmittag hab ich Maden unter das Abtropfgestell gefunden. Ich hab mich deswegen entscheiden eine Grundreinigung durch zu führen. Die Gläser waren befallen mit Schimmel und das Besteck war auch betroffen.
Bitte, bitte, bitte das schmutzige Geschirr NICHT stehen lassen. Immer abwaschen! Es gibt auch überall verrottendes Essen- bitte wegschmeissen!
Wenn ihr euch an diesen einfachen Regeln halten würdet, könnten wir alle die Küche benutzen und genießen.
Gruß,
E. Stillman

Translation:

Dear roommates,
at some point one can no longer endure such crap. This afternoon I found maggots in the dish drainer. I have therefore decided to do a thorough cleaning. The glasses were covered with mold and the silverware was also affected. (doesn't translate well from German)
Please, please, please, do NOT leave your dirty dishes. Always wash them! There is also rotting food everywhere-please throw it away!
If you would all stick to these simple rules, we could all use and enjoy the Kitchen.
Regards,
E. Stillman

It seemed to do the job, as my kitchen is still pretty clean. I'm just waiting for it to go back to the way that it was... hopefully they can hold out three more weeks before they regress to their normal state of disgusting-ness.