So we had an interesting night on Friday night. We put Carson to bed around 8:30pm. Both of the bedrooms in our apartment and the storage closet are on the second floor and the living space and kitchen are on the first. About 8:45pm I heard a large crash and stumbling around in our storage closet. The closet has two doors, one leads from the outside into the storage closet and the other leads from the storage closet to our apartment next to our bedrooms. I called Ryan to come upstairs to see if he heard the noise too. We stood by the door and listened to someone in the room banging around, falling down and dragging things around! Someone was robbing us!!! Ryan banged on the door and said "Hello?". We heard more stumbling around then then what sounded like someone falling against our apartment door. Then we heard the outside door shut and quiet. The door from our apartment to the storage closet has a lock on it (thank God!) so Ryan unlocked it and opened it armed with a butcher knife! The door to the outside had been shut and locked back and all of our suitcases and a bag were gone. We also noticed that the air conditioner that we had bought from some other Cerner expats who just moved back to K.C., was moved closer to the door. Ryan and I had no idea what to do in a situation like this? We didn't know how to get in touch with the French police by phone. We don't speak French, so how would we even tell them what happened. We remembered that we had just met our downstairs neighbor and he speaks English, so Ryan went down to tell him what happened and to see if he could give us some help with information and translation. Max (that is our neighbors name) came up to check out the scene. Max and Ryan noticed that they could see our suitcases through the window on the there side of the door that leads to the outside. They went out and brought the cases in. We all talked about what we thought had happened. We figured it was someone in the building, that had a key to that door because they obviously had gotten in with a key. We thought they were after the air conditioner and that's why they took the suitcases out and set them to the side so they could get out with the air conditioner. We also decided that the person was not very smart or was very drunk because they were not quiet at all and were falling all over the place! Definitely not a cat burglar. Max told us that our next door neighbor one building over (our walls connect) is known to be a drunk and his outside storage area door is right next to ours. We knew there was something odd about him because he blares his music at all hours of the night and we here lots of crashes and slams through the wall. So looking back on all the facts and happenings. Ryan and I were 95% sure it was our loud drunk neighbor next door. Max told us he would go with us to the guardian (she's like the super of our building) to tell her what had happened and see what we needed to do. We thanked him and Ryan and I opened a bottle of wine to calm our nerves and hopefully make sleeping a little easier. It did..... : )
The next day Max came up to our apartment to tell us he had done some investigating. He had actually gone to the drunk neighbors apartment to talk to him about something else. He said he wanted to kind of feel him out for information. The drunk neighbor brought up the incident from the night before about the "stupid new neighbors who have all their junk in my space!" and how he was mad about it and that he went in there last night to take everything out! He told Max that he owns that space and has a key and will throw all of our junk away if we don't get it out! That news came as a surprise to us, because we were told when we rented the apartment that we owned the space and could use it for storage......which we were doing! We are still unclear on who actually owns the space since it looks like we both own a key to the room. We are going to get in touch with our landlord to find out the real scoop on the room rights. I'm still wondering why the drunk neighbor never came to our door to explain the situation and come to a resolution. Instead he waited till he was lit up and came over unannounced to take take care of business on his own! Ryan and I feel much better knowing that it wasn't a burglary, but a drunk neighbor and some miss information! I'm amazed at his behavior but I guess I shouldn't expect too much out of a drunk..... Oh how I love apartment living!
The first picture is the view from outside of our storage closet door. The door with the lock on it is the closet and the other two are our bedrooms. Carson was sleeping in the far room when it all went down!!! The next picture is the inside of the closet and the door that our neighbor has a key to. He doesn't have a key to our apartment door and we don't have a key to the outside. So we both own a key. Time will tell who really owns the space!
