So finally I managed to get to Amman with some two hours delay as apparently a sandstorm affected many airports in the area. Result: half of my weekend was already gone as Friday is my weekend L At least Katja, her brother and his girlfriend came and picked me up. It is just nice to have family picking you up instead of dealing with a cab driver, although they usually are very nice and polite (“Welcome to Jordan!”) and as they have fix rates I never had discussions regarding the fare. So we arrived back home and we had a nice BBQ as it was unusually hot. We finished the dinner and sat outside on the balcony as we always do but believe it or not, the sky was cloudy and all strange…it felt unusual humid. And then it happened…! First rain in Amman!! I couldn’t believe it! How unfair is this? All summer long the nicest weather and now when we have the first visitors it rains!! AAAAHHHH! OK, maybe I need to be more specific. Some 5 to 10 drops felt out of the clouds and evaporated after two minutes… but anyway it rained! We stayed outside until after midnight and then we went all to bed as we planned to do something the next day.
We got up and after a lazy breakfast we went to Al Fuhays and to Iraq Ala Mir. Both are villages around Amman. Iraq Ala Mir is the village where we took the pic with the 57 degrees in summer. So we were curious to see how hot it would be now. But the real reason was that we wanted to go and visit the handcrafts shop where women produce soap, paper, ceramic and tissues. All handmade and supporting women. Reason enough for me to go there and buy things. We found some very nice envelopes and cards, a beautiful vase and other small tings. I am sure my mother in law will love the shop ;-)
We were all tired and the sun was not so hot as last time but it was still around 35 degrees. So we decided to go back and hang out back home. Next day was nothing spectacular (Katja will blog what she did with her brother and N. as she knows better). In the evening I wanted to go home at a good time as I wanted to spend some social time with our guests. I was at the elevator when Katja calls me. I pick up and she is all upset and says:” Everything is under water! Where is the main valve to close the water?!!!” Good question… No clue… in the meantime water was running! Who ever has been in such a situation knows that Murphy is there for sure to make your life more miserable as it already is! Katja away during the day and therefore the water was flowing for god knows how many hours…. Landlord out of town and not reachable…I was at the office…brother in law and his girlfriend at our place…a colleague from the German office just arrived that day in Amman and I invited him for a BBQ to our place…and the water was still shooting out of a broke pipe…. Katja and I were trying to get the landlord on the phone. Finally the son who lives in Germany picked up and said that somebody would come soon to fix it. Unfortunately he did not tell who and when. So after a moment at my office trying to get different people on the phone I decided to go back home to help as I couldn’t do anything from the office anymore. (I stayed at the office as I had people around me that speak Arabic and helped me to make the landlord and other to understand what happened). So I rush back home and when I entered the staircase water was already not dripping but flowing down the central wall! Oh dear I thought… I run up the stairs and saw all the three in short pants whipping the water with brooms. In a nutshell; water everywhere. About 5 cm high (two inches)… everywhere… Katja was not in a good mood and the other two were working like crazy to get the water to the drain in the rooms. FYI: in Jordan the have a hole in the floor in every room. The reason why is, that in order to get he floor clean, you have to spill water on the floor and wipe it off. They then wipe it towards the holes. If you want to clean the floor the way people are used to in Western Europe…forget it. The sand and dust on the floor will stay and will be just more and less be equally distributed over all floors. You will see it once the next time the sun will shine in through the windows…
So back to the water story. When I arrived the water was stopped by the neighbor’s electrician who went to the basement and just closed all faucets. But tha whole apartment was still under water. The prevent to be electrocuted he also cut the electricity. It worked as long as we had sun but by the time I arrived back home the sun was almost going down and as soon it disappeared we couldn’t see anything anymore in the apartment. We started to distribute torches and lucky enough we bought additional one the weekend before as we don’t want to be caught in darkness if power goes away. So we were all wiping the floors trying to get the water in the wholes when the landlords helper showed up. Easy…”Salam a leikum Mr. Fabrisiu.. Kyf hallagh?” Good evening Mr. Fabrizio, how are you?” I told him that we were up in sh#* creek without paddle, but he was not too impressed and walked up the stairs, entered the apartment, greeted everybody and went to see where the water came from. First thing was to call Katja to tell her where she should have stopped the water. The thing is that even he struggled to close it as the faucet is in such an impossible position that you can hardly close it! For the record: we are talking about the main faucet that should be easily accessible… but as I wrote many times: things are different. So he screwed out the valve that burst and closed the hole with a screw. Then he turned on the electricity as there was no water around anymore. “Khallas!” (that’s it!) was his comment… he brought the landlords wife and the daughter with him who came up the stairs to the apartment after some 5 minutes. They were very nice and left phone numbers for the future and were very compassionate. Once the big part of water was gone we pulled out of the cabinets all towels, threw them in the floor, stepped on them and walked around by pulling them over the floor in the apartment. That was the most efficient way to dry the apartment. In addition we opened all windows and turned the ventilators on to make the humidity go away. After the first shock and some two hours of cleaning we sat down and I prepared a drink for everybody because we really deserved it. He sat down and after half hour or so we said “Screw it! We’ll have BBQ anyway!” so we prepared everything and had a nice BBQ. I called my German colleague who was staying at a hotel some 15 minutes away that if he wanted to come now, he’d be more than welcome. He jumped into a cab and he arrived after half hour or so. It was very nice seeing him, especially as I deal with him a lot on business but as he is located in Germany we don’t see each other very often. We had dinner and discussed and at the end it turned into a nice closing of a very hectic evening. If you want to know if anything got damaged? Yes some thing suffered from being in the water but nothing that could not be fixed or is irreplaceable. E.g the furniture in the guest room absorbed water and expanded where it was standing in the water. TV stations and other things survived as we do not have them on the floor.
Katja’s brother his girlfriend and Katja originally planned to go for a trip the next day from Amman to Petra and further to Wadi Rum, sleep there and come back to Amman in the evening. We postponed the departure as our too guest were too lazy ;-) to unpack their luggage (although we have cabinets…) and let all their stuff on the floor in the bags…bags were swimming around and all their stuff was soaked L I really felt bad for them. But they hung up all their things in the room under the roof and I gave him some things to wear. Her things were OK as her luggage held back the water in a better way.
Everybody left and went to bed early as all were tired, we because we worked hard to get the water off, my German colleague as he flew in at 4 a.m. and me as I did work all day and helped to get rid of the water too...
Stay tuned for the sequel ;-) Soon in this theater! Take care wherever you are in this world. Big hug from Amman!
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